Return to Level 5
by RalynnFrost
Summary: The hunt for the world's most infamous serial killer is on and Claire is behind the reins. "Dream" volume 3 - Sylaire
1. Prologue: Passion

**Return to Level 5**

**Inspired by "Love The Way You Lie (Part 2)" by Rihanna ft. Eminem**

"_Even angels have their wicked schemes,_

_and you take that to new extremes._

_But you'll always be my hero._

_Even though you've lost your mind."_

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><p><strong>Prologue: <strong>

**Passion**

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><p><em><strong>Passion. It is our passions that drive us for better, or for worse. Whether we use them for good, or for evil, bending them to our will, or they breaking us in turn, it is in an inescapable inevitability of life. So many find their greatest moments in passion while still others will find themselves suffocated by it in the darkest depths of the human soul. Perhaps, if we could find a way to live without our passions then we may be able to cultivate some semblance of peace amongst one another. However, without the inner fire and fortitude that our passions inspire in us, we would also become empty, hollow shells of the once great creatures we were.<strong>_

_**The joys of love, the clarity of our hatred, the green eyes of envy, and the desperate ecstasies of pain and grief are all the things that make life worth living as well as ending. We can fight our passions. We can lock them away and refuse to give in to their demands. But the moment we repress them the most is also the moment they will rise and throw us into the tides of emotional upheaval with a resounding roar.**_

_December, 2012_

A young blonde woman in her early twenties shuffled along the London streets unaware of the predatory eyes following her every movement. She held her coat closer to her to ward off the late night chill and turned onto a lonely row that was nearly deserted of people at the late hour. Hushed footsteps steadily stalked after her. When she turned to glance over her shoulder her attention was drawn to the tall man in a long black pea coat pacing himself behind her. Somehow the way the shadows enveloped him, obscuring his face from view made the unwelcome presence menacing. Goose bumps prickled over her skin, and a shiver ran down the length of her spine.

The blonde's gait quickened, and so did his. Tossing another look over her shoulder, she saw him maintaining the calculated distance. Her pace slowly increased until she had broken into a sprint. The great tower clock struck the top of the hour and a bell tolled for her ominously. She was frantically trying to escape him then, keeping watch behind her and nearly tripping. His long strides kept him within closing range easily, but he wasn't ready to strike just yet. He enjoyed that he was a predator and she was his prey.

_Bong… Bong… Bong… _

Her escalated breathing muffled the echoes of her rushed steps against the pavement until the dance between hunter and hunted brought them to a dead end. The young blonde found herself cornered in the darkness of the alleyway. Her hands pawed at the walls blocking her from freedom. Tossing another look over her shoulder to where she knew he stood, hidden by the shadows but somehow taunting her with his stillness, she hesitantly lifted a foot to place on the wall and shifted her center of gravity to start running up the vertical boundary. The girl rose higher and higher from the ground where her tormentor remained, circling over to the next building, preparing to leap towards the fire escape that would release her. And then an invisible force tugged at her and pulled her kicking and screaming back down to the realm of her foe's reach.

"What do you want?" she rasped between urgent gasps as she was pinned to the wall by unseen bonds.

"Neat trick, cheerleader," the low voice came back to her from the darkness. He stepped forward into the moonlight exposing his face to her. Her attacker may have been a handsome man under different circumstances, but the way his thick brow line sheltered the pair of distant and yet coldly calculating brown eyes as well as how his lips pulled themselves into a cruel smirk only made him more terrifying to her.

"Cheerleader? What cheerleader?" she asked in a tight, high pitched tone, fighting for control of her body.

_Bong… Bong… Bong…_

He moved closer to her until they were nearly chest to chest. His hand lifted to trail fingers down her cheek and neck, and over her collar bones in a startlingly intimate way. She clenched her eyes shut tight and twisted her face away from him as he bent forward to tangle a strand of hair, glowing white in the moon light, around his finger, conspicuously sniffing at her neck.

"I'd like to see how that works," he whispered into her ear, his stubbled cheek scraping against hers. The final bell rang through the night before giving birth to a silence that would only be interrupted by a gurgled scream and the sound of blood splashing over the pavement.

* * *

><p>Claire scowled at the white tiled floor that slipped under her feet representing the last mile she would walk as a potentially free woman. Fellow prisoners banged their fists against the glass windows of their cells shouting obscenities and crude innuendos at her as she passed by. She struggled briefly as they stopped at the heavily reinforced vault door marked as the entrance to Level 5 and one of the guards behind her struck the back of her head with his weapon. She winced at the pain, feeling the tell-tale trickle of warm liquid drip down through her hair onto the back of her neck. They gripped her arms too tightly once the door to the highest security sector was open. There would be bruises there in the morning but they didn't care. They were in a hurry to get her contained.<p>

Two sets of guards marched ahead of her, two more in the rear, and one on each of her flanks with their rifles at the ready. She had stiff steel manacles chaining her hands together behind her back and then connecting the ankle cuffs that scraped over the tile with each step. It was all a little overkill. What did they really expect her to do?

Claire was rudely shoved into the last cell on the block, several empty ones separating her from the other inmates so that she would be confined in solitude. She glowered at the smirking faces of the guards as the door slammed shut, sealing her in tight. Her quarters were freshly renovated for her arrival, painted in a gentle pastel blue that was no doubt meant to be calming. A real bed had been placed in the corner where a regulation cot would have otherwise hung from bolted fixtures on the wall. She had even been granted a privacy screen for the humble bathroom area. The meager accommodations should have been somewhat reassuring, but they only filled her with more contempt, serving as a reminder for the real reason she was spending her time there. She was a rat stuck in a miserable cage waiting for some deranged lab doctor in a white coat to come experiment on her.

Claire wandered over to her bed and collapsed onto the padded mattress, wiggling around her bindings to make herself as comfortable as possible. If she had the energy left required to cry the white pillow case would have answered her sobs, but all she really felt was tired. Tired of fate, and time, and the cruelty of the reality she was surrounded by. Tired of trying. Tired of the fight. This was one battle that she wouldn't be allowed to win.

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><p>Peter and Luke marched down the hallway of the apartment complex warily watching for anyone that might be following or worse, waiting for their arrival. The duo hesitated once they reached the right number; the knob had been broken and the door hung slightly ajar. They nodded at one another and Luke cocked his pistol. Peter kicked the door the rest of the way open and burst through the entry way with his hands raised, ready to attack with the blue sparks of crackling electricity dancing at his fingertips. But they were only met with silence and a foreboding sense of calm.<p>

"Mohinder? Matt? Anybody?" Peter called into the dark living room. Nothing. There didn't even appear to be a sign of struggle. All of the furniture and electronic equipment was undisturbed. Luke worked his way through the apartment dutifully keeping his weapon ready at his side while Peter followed suit.

"I got nothing. You?" Luke asked, not quite subtle hints of fear in his eyes.

"Nothing," Peter mumbled darkly. The Petrelli moved over to Mohinder's desk area and noticed the blood spatter arched over the computer screen. He winced, his mind running around the numerous grisly scenarios that could have caused such a scene to unfold. Reluctantly he shifted the mouse next to the weathered keyboard and the screen flickered to life. One of the geneticist's DNA mapping programs continued to run in the background with a warning message in bright red letters flashing: MATCH INCOMPLETE. ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO TRANSMIT THE INFORMATION NOW?

"Shit!" he screamed, whirling around to drive his fist through the wall.

Luke flinched momentarily before flipping open his cell phone. He snapped a picture of the bloody computer, and quickly punched in a number that went straight to voice mail citing unavailable service. "Noah, it's starting."

* * *

><p>Matt pressed a finger to his pursed lips, signaling to the woman at his side to remain quiet. A team of D.S.R.E.C. agents, fully suited in their signature black body armor, patrolled down the alleyway. They both held their breath as one of them stopped to inspect the dumpster they were crouched tenuously behind, cloaked under Matt's concentrated will for invisibility. The field operative jammed the muzzle of his weapon into the garbage, flipping it over and clanging against the metal sides in search of anyone that might be hidden there. He could see the man shake his head at the others and they continued on.<p>

Maya sobbed quietly under Matt's shoulder as they crept back down the alley in the direction they had come from. They were surrounded by Department agents. and both of them were painfully aware that his injuries needed immediate medical attention. Parkman could barely support his own weight. His face was a bruised and bloody mess, his breathing haggard with a sick gurgling sound deep in his chest, and the arm draped painfully around his companion's side bent at an awkward angle.

Someone dropped from the sky overhead to the pavement just in front of them baring the Department's insignia. Matt made to grab for the gun at his hip, but the agent held up his hands in truce. He slowly lifted his helmet so that they could see his face. "West, what the hell are you doing here?" Matt ground out.

"It's over, Matt. They got to Claire." The young man's face was contorted painfully, his eyes glistening with unshed tears of worry and frustration. "They took her to Level 5. We'll never be able to get to her."

"There's one person who can," he wheezed before dropping to his knees.

* * *

><p>"Bollocks," Edgar grumbled, rubbing his arms and shivering, each breath puffing into a bit of fog in front of his face.<p>

"How long do you think we'll survive in here?" Tracey asked dreamily. She may have been immune to the sub-zero temperatures of the walk-in freezer, but air was in short supply. She wanted so badly to do whatever she could to help her… whatever he was to her, but the slightest touch would only hasten his demise. The speedster was huddled into himself in the opposite corner, his lips an unhealthy shade of blue and his body quaking desperately for heat. A patch of icy necrosis from frostbite discolored his arm where she had grabbed him earlier.

"I guess it doesn't much matter as long as the right people find him," Edgar gestured half-heartedly to Noah Bennet's lifeless body slumped in the other corner.

"Stubborn bastard," Tracey growled, kicking at the dead man's limp legs. "Should have told _someone else _where the damn antidote was."

"Don't worry, love. _He'll_ come back. He _always_ comes back… for _them_ anyways." Edgar grinned mischievously, his head growing lighter with each passing minute.

* * *

><p>Emma hummed absent-mindedly as she searched through the refrigerator for something appetizing. She shook her head with a small smile; her cravings were getting ridiculous. The pickles and chocolate ice cream with hot sauce was one thing, but the strawberry and coconut chicken over asparagus noodles was an entirely different matter. It didn't even sound, look, or smell good, but her stomach seemed to have taken on a mind of its own.<p>

A glimmer of color caught her attention. Swirls of blue and green hovered briefly around her but that didn't make sense. Emma had learned every sound in the house and those of the people that frequented… Nothing, and no one she knew of made that particular sequence. She turned to see a grouping of men in black uniforms blocking the doorway from the kitchen. The agent closest to her was saying something. She could see the colors coming from him, but his helmet concealed how his mouth was moving.

"I can't hear what you're saying," she tried to explain, her hands subconsciously moving signs with every word. Emma could see the patches on their armor reading D.S.R.E.C. and a wave of adrenaline filled her veins. She tried to remember exactly where she had left her phone. She had to call Peter. He wouldn't like the people from the Department being there.

The agent that had been talking shrugged his shoulders and motioned to the other men who moved to take her. Emma reacted before she had time to think about what she was doing. She screamed in their direction and a spiraling column of various colors shot forward to clash against them.

* * *

><p>"Mrs. Whitlocke, we've begun operations as you commanded. We've already managed to capture the Bennet girl as well as a few others. Anyone remaining should be brought in shortly."<p>

"And Sylar?"

"No word on him yet, ma'am, but we'll find him."

Whitlocke flipped her dark hair over her shoulder and turned around to face her most trusted agent. He smiled a touch at her and a faint blush colored his cheeks. She crossed the distance between them and ran a soft hand down the side of his face and neck. "And what are you going to do when you find him?"

"Bring him to you, ma'am," he answered robotically, clearly fighting the primal urges that her presence was inspiring in him. She rewarded his answer with a chaste kiss on the very corner of his mouth, startling the young man. His manner was that of the good little soldier she expected him to be, but the heat rising in his body and his rushed breath told her everything she needed to know about how to _really_ control him. Her hands mapped out the contours of his sculpted chest and stomach before returning to the back of his neck to play with his hair. Whitlocke tilted her head to the side, studying his repressed reactions with an evil twinkle in her eye.

"Would you like to help me punish him, Mr. O'Keefe?" The young agent shook his head in rapid agreement. She moved to whisper into his ear, "Would you like to help me kill him?"

"I'd do anything for you," he pledged instantly. She rewarded him again with a delicate touching of their lips meant more to tease his attentions than to please him.

* * *

><p>"Ms. Bennet?" a voice echoed through the cell's com system. Claire rolled over, burying her face in the pillow. She made to grab the sack of fluff so she could put it over her head and block out the annoying voice that threatened to jerk her away from wonderful dreams about <em>him<em>, but her hands cried out in angry stings of pain against the chains that bound them.

"Ms. Bennet," the voice called again. She stirred with a sigh and rolled over, rocking herself into a sitting position. There was the lab coat she had been dreading. "Hello, Ms. Bennet. It's a great honor to meet you. I'm Doctor - "

"I _don't_ care," Claire interjected disdainfully. _An honor to meet you, my ass._

The dark skinned woman in the white lab coat lost her wide shining smile and looked genuinely hurt. She had probably just graduated out of some Department training program that fed their rookies grand stories about the heroics of the First Response team and their glorious leader, Claire Bennet. Savior of the "specials". Saint of the damn Department, and flipping pillar of society for the ability gifted. She scoffed without remorse. That pedestal was a tall one. She was only surprised that it had taken her that long to tumble off of it.

"You're a brave one," she muttered venomously as the doctor slid her key card into the electronic lock and punched in the security code that granted access to the cell.

"You're injured," she whispered on entrance. The doctor crossed over to the bed and examined the head wound that had been delivered by one of the escorting guards earlier. Claire hissed when her fingers probed at the damaged area of her scalp. Dark hands also glossed over the forming bruises on her arms, and the scrapes on her hands. "How long have you been without your abilities?"

Claire tilted her head, analyzing the woman before her. She seemed nice, but they all seemed nice at first. "Long enough," she spat out resolving not to give them any more information than absolutely necessary.

"I see," she nodded quietly. The doctor may not have understood Claire's attitude towards her, or the Department, but her intuition had made her privy to larger workings around her than anyone cared to disclose to someone of her pay grade. The D.S.R.E.C. wasn't just a research institute, organization, or a branch of the government. It was a living machine filled to the brim with complexities and secrets that she was better off not knowing. She opened up her file on her patient and skimmed over the pertinent information. "And when were you exposed to the Shanti virus, Ms. Bennet?"

"None of your damn business."

"Claire, please," the doctor tried to appeal to her, "the more you share with me, the greater your chances are that I can help you. I'll do everything I can to treat your… _condition_," she eyed the patient head to toe, "and maybe we can work on getting your abilities back."

Claire laughed mockingly and flopped herself back down onto her bed. _Condition_… Is that what they were calling it? "Let me guess. You were sent down here by some corporate suit to figure out what's wrong with me so you can relay that information to the guy signing your pay check. They don't give a damn about what happens to me, or 'fixing' me. All the Department wants is a weapon. Something they can use to control people like us." _Too bad they might get it this time._

How did everything go so wrong? It wasn't that long ago that life had seemed nearly perfect for them all. Claire had a job she loved, a fiancé, and friends… She smiled ruefully at her cell's ceiling. Like all good stories, it's best to start at the beginning.


	2. We All Have Our Demons

**Q&A: How far into the future are we? There will be three individual time lines that converge for this story, but the bulk of it will occur roughly one year from the end of "Vicious Circles".**

**Is Emma pregnant? The Petrelli family may find themselves expecting a new addition soon...**

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><p><strong>Part I: It's Coming...<strong>

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><p><strong>1<strong>

**We All Have Our Demons**

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><p><em>New York, 2032<em>

Mortar fire shook the walls, sending clouds of dust into the air where it sparkled briefly in the slats of waning sunlight that shone between the boards over the windows. Muffled gun shots rang out while commanding shouts and screams drifted back to him through his mental haze. Hiro tried to open his sleepy eyes and focus beyond the fog when the sounds of heavy footsteps approached. His long ponytail had flopped down onto the side of his face, tickling his nose.

"… artillery… defense squads…"

"… hold their positions… at all costs… too much at stake." He couldn't quite make himself concentrate long enough to catch the whole of the conversation taking place before him, even as a small patch of flame sprung to life on the wooden planks forming the creaky floor mere feet from his face.

"Damn it! I said hold your positions!"

"Rebel dogs…"

A large black booted foot stamped out the scorching embers before they could blister his skin. "Assemble the Sentinels… plan B… failed… Rangers… Bring me Ando Masahashi." The last fragment of her words captured his attention. Hiro lifted his head and squinted through the fumes that clung to his nose, pain creeping up his neck from the awkward angle. General Whitlocke - he openly scoffed at the use of that particular name - stood a few paces away with her husband, and trusted second-in-command, both clad in their prized black body armor baring Allied Forces patches on the shoulders. If he could only focus and get himself free from his bindings, he could end the entire war by simply removing her from the picture. Not even her husband would continue this kind of madness if she weren't there to goad him into it. Even when he had finally been seized and brought to this wretched place, Hiro had seen some respectable shred of humanity left in the man's combat weary eyes.

"You can't go out there… won't… watch you… slaughtered… Not even… you can take a whole… army by yourself… _He'll_… be coming for you." Dark laughter responded to her second's concern.

"You really think I'm worried about _him_? …couldn't… kill me… after all these years…"

Uniformed footfalls echoed in announcement of the general's summoned forces. He couldn't quite get an exact count on how many there were, but the group was made up of some of her most fearsome soldiers.

"Hiro!" He perked up at the call of his longtime friend. Ando was forced to his knees at Hiro's side with an audible groan of pain. "Hiro, what are you doing here?" Ando's soot smudged face was painted with worry over the wrinkles of encroaching age.

"Couldn't leave _you_ here, could I? What would Batman be without Robin?" He broke out into nonsensical giggles. Ando faintly smiled and struggled to repress a laugh though guilt filled his eyes. Nakamura was bent over a makeshift bench with his hands and feet tightly bound behind his back over his knee length, black leather duster. Their captures had bent the time traveler forward over the beam so that his face was forced into the smoke of a small burning spot of opium in a dish on the floor. His abilities were practically useless under the influence of the drugs, something that Ando was also beginning to feel lightheaded from.

"Where's…?" Masahashi rolled his eyes over the air above them and shrugged his shoulders suggestively, not wanting to truly voice the question aloud in the presence of their enemies. Hiro gave him a dopey grin and shrugged nonchalantly in response. They both began to snort and snicker at their private joke.

"Move! Move! Move! Take out their anti-air!"

"Just remember _she's_ mine!" Familiar voices could be heard directing the attacking troops below the stronghold. Another round of small explosions vibrated the foundations.

"Is that?" Ando started to ask with a glimmer of hope.

"Looks like the Brain Man finally found us." Hiro turned his smile upward to the haughty general. "You're going to be in so much trouble! Somebody is going to get a good spanking!" They both roared with laughter not even noticing that Whitlocke had failed to pay them any attention. A sour sneer crossed her scarred lips as she peered through the boards over the window out onto the scene unfolding.

"Peter Petrelli," she growled, slamming a hand against the wall.

"We need to get moving. We can't hold off the both of them for long."

Whitlocke crossed her arms defiantly but shook her head in resignation. "Get them up," she motioned to Hiro and Ando. They were roughly yanked to their feet, and Hiro's bonds were severed. His head immediately began to feel signs of relief, but two of the armored troops held onto him so that he wouldn't fall over unsteady feet. "We're taking a little road trip boys."

"I don't think so," a sing-song voice answered. One of the troops removed their helmet to reveal a pale-skinned young woman with tussled black hair and startlingly blue eyes.

"Miranda," the General snarled contemptuously.

"In the flesh," she smirked devilishly, winking at a widely grinning Hiro and Ando. Nearly instantly a dark tentacle of energy shot out to snare Hiro by the throat, dragging him over to a wobbly position directly in front of Whitlocke, and between her and Miranda.

"Hiro!" Ando cried in alarm, receiving a heavy blow to the face from one of the troops when he made to assist his friend. The general placed her palms against the time traveler's grayed temples and peeked over his shoulder with a wicked twinkle in her glaring eyes. Miranda started towards them, but she clicked her tongue in disapproval.

"Think you're fast enough to save him before I can kill him?"

"I can't let you do this," she ground out, noticeably flinching when Whitlocke tightened her grip on Hiro's head just a touch, making the man wince.

"But you can't kill _me_ either, can you? Not even to save your precious hero?" She laughed maniacally when Miranda scowled at her in defeat.

"Peter!" a low, velvety baritone voice called out. Someone screamed nearby followed by more gun fire. Bright flashes of light reflected from the hallway, and crackles of electricity charged the air releasing the smell of ozone to float back to the crowded room.

"As fun as this," the general's second waved his hand between the two women, "all is, we should _really_ get going now." The man pinched the bridge of his nose, slightly crooked from a past break, in open irritation. His agitated but unworried mannerisms were the display of a man that had seen one too many unresolved confrontations between them.

"You're going to take me and my men back to where this all started," Whitlocke cruelly whispered into his ear. "We're going to change the future, you and I. We're going to stop this war from ever happening."

"I'll never help you," Hiro groaned, hitching his breath as her grip tightened again. White spots began to lazily flicker in his vision.

"Think of all the lives we would save, Hiro. Isn't that something you want?"

"He's not going to be of much use to us if you crush him now," her husband warned. His patience with her was wearing more than thin and an uneasy edge coated his tone. She released Hiro and took a step away from him obediently, but was careful to keep a tendril attached to his arm for security.

"Ando, if you would be so kind?" Whitlocke motioned the troops holding the other Japanese man to bring him forward. He scowled at her with open disdain and placed an apprehensive hand on Hiro's shoulder, crimson sparks flickering from his fingers. Arms were linked throughout the group in preparation for teleportation.

Miranda's arm suddenly shot out from her side and Hiro felt the general involuntarily flinch, but instead of attacking, she slammed the door to the room shut and ran to brace herself against it. Her lean frame bumped over the surface of the barrier as someone on the other end attempted to break through it. He wondered momentarily, still slightly dream bound from the opium, why she would hold off their rescuers, but once he heard the voices shouting for entrance it became much clearer. A terrible bloodbath would inevitably ensue if the two opposing forces were to clash in such a tight space, and in the heat of battle who could really predict who may or may not survive? There would be no love lost if Whitlocke's minions were decimated, but Hiro, Ando, and even her husband could possibly become causalities of old grudges and flared tempers.

"I can't break through!"

"What?"

"I can't… something is stopping it…" Bright pulses of light flashed under the doorway and the young woman holding it at bay noticeably strained against the force. The sounds of crumbling architecture and muttered profanities could be heard just outside.

"Miranda?"

Whitlocke chuckled darkly to herself, sickly grinning at the girl who could only glare bitterly in return. Her moment of triumph was short lived though. All of the air seemed to have been sucked from the room causing everyone to falter in their actions. A vacuum was draining pressure all around them; ears and joints popped painfully, and panels creaked angrily while searing heat spread over the floor, lightly smoldering the wood without actually reaching the point of combustion. Miranda clenched her eyes tight and shifted her feet uncomfortably. Whitlocke fell to her hands and knees, her dark hair sizzling as it made contact with the floor boards. Hiro and Ando collapsed onto one another, the soles of their boots melting and sticking beneath them. Before they could blink an explosive surge of energy rippled over them sending bodies and structural fragments flying in every direction.

His lungs cried out in a ragged gasp for that next sweet breath of precious oxygen. Hiro's eyes rolled around for a moment taking in the dazed view. Whitlocke had recovered quickly and hunched herself over her husband's broken and bloodied form. He watched with a surprisingly amount of pity for the woman as she pounded her fists against his chest, soundlessly screaming in horror when his eyes closed one last time. Soldiers were stumbling to their feet again, holding onto one another for support. Nakamura lolled his head around to meet Ando's blank gaze, his friend's eyes glazed over with an eerie peace. Miranda appeared before him, shaking his shoulders, and mouthing words frantically that he couldn't hear to understand.

"It's okay my little butterfly," he whispered to her, cupping her trembling chin in a soft reassuring palm. "Destiny has one more quest for me." Hiro flopped onto his side, his ribs protesting every inch, and snatched the general's ankle. "Be careful what you wish for."

"Give my regards to your father," Whitlocke growled venomously at Miranda with an unrivaled amount of anger and hatred in her glistening eyes. Several dark limbs of energy sprung from her to grasp at her troops, and with a blink they were gone. Sylar and Peter, neither of them having aged a day in the past twenty years, burst into the smoky room poised to obliterate anything that moved. Sylar immediately made his way to a shaken Miranda's side, taking her face in his hands as his hardened eyes questioned her well-being. Salty tears spilled down her cheeks while she looked after Ando.

_You're too late._

* * *

><p><em>New York, 2011<em>

Whitlocke, Hiro, and a small handful of her faithful soldiers reappeared on an outcropping of docks overlooking a harbor. She climbed to her feet and wandered slowly towards a line of warehouses; taking a deep breath of the chilled briny air, and glancing up at the suggestions of stars in the sky, masked by hazy clouds and city lights.

"It's been so long," she mumbled to herself. "I was afraid I would forget what this city used to look like." Sounds of scuffling brought her attentions back to Nakamura. The old time traveler still maintained an admirable amount of spunk, and Whitlocke found herself frowning just a little less when he attempted to shrug off her guards. She motioned to the troops to release him and rejoined his side, kneeling down so that they were eye level with one another while he was crouched into himself on his knees.

"I'm sorry about Ando. It shouldn't have happened like that." Hiro found traces of genuine remorse and apology in her eyes. He gave her a curt nod, never for a moment breaking their steady gaze.

"I am also sorry that you're husband had to fall. We may have been on different sides, but he was a good man." Cold fury reignited in her eyes with the unwelcome memory of his life fading away in her arms.

"Sylar will pay for _everything_ that he has done," she shut her eyes tight in pain, "and everything he is _going_ to do." The enemies met each other with a final knowing glance. "I promise I'm going to fix all this. I'll make it right. And for what it's worth, I always liked you."

Nakamura accepted her solemn vow with a touch of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth. _Their's_ was a story he had seen play out time and time again. The variables changed, but the outcome always remained the same. Some things not even the best, or most vile of intentions could deny. Fate had an odd way of becoming itself.

"Good-bye, Hiro." Whitlocke softly palmed the sides of his weathered face and placed a chaste kiss on his forehead before snapping his neck. The time traveler's body fell to the damp ground with a limp thud. "Move out," she snarled at the soldiers gathered around her. There was a score was to settle.

* * *

><p>"So what's the plan?" Noah asked, panting slightly.<p>

"First, you're all going to spend the day with the people you love. It might be our last," Sylar punctuated each word with a direct look into the faces of the people around him. Everyone shared a hesitant glance with one another feeling the full weight of that statement. "Miranda," he paused, an awkward smile briefly touching his eyes, "showed me where Claire's body is." His eyes darkened again, clouding over like the summer sky before a storm. "I can bring her back." The words were spoken with a conviction that none dared to question, although everyone but Noah and Peter seemed to wince at the idea.

"Kline's power is directly connected to his blood line. Since Claire is his last descendant, he's weak while she's… I can take him out first, but I'm going to need your help."

"The Department is going to come when he goes after Claire." A milky whiteness filled Peter's eyes for a moment before fading and leaving deep concern for what he had seen. "They're going to bring everything they have to try to contain Sylar. They'll have explicit orders to take him alive, but anyone that interferes…"

"Is fair game," Sylar finished with a grim shake of his head.

"So we're all supposed to line up like sitting ducks?" Matt voiced tensely.

"No. All you'll have to do is hold them off until Kline is dealt with and Claire is revived. We'll take care of the rest." He wouldn't look any of them in the eye as he muttered the last sentence. He knew only too well that what he meant to do wouldn't exactly sit well with them. Parkman tilted his head to the side a bit in an attempt to read him, but Sylar had been careful to keep up a mental block to thwart anyone from picking up on those thoughts; even Peter who could undoubtedly _feel_ his unease, but contributed it to the stress of the situation at hand.

"I want - _need_ you all to seriously think about this. It's not just your _lives_ at stake tonight. Anyone the Department sees working to help… a wanted killer will be pursued. If you stand up with us, you'll be turned into hunted criminals over night. They'll be coming after you _and_ your families. You'll be fugitives." Six heads subconsciously bowed in consideration while feet shuffled and arms were crossed defiantly.

"We won't think any less of anybody that wants to walk away now," Peter said with renewed confidence, placing a trusting hand on Sylar's shoulder. The two men shared a nod of mutual respect.

"What the hell? I'm in," Edgar piped up with a wry grin.

"I just want my daughter back," Noah said, stepping up to the plate. Slowly but surely everyone agreed to make their stand.

Noah alone was left lingering while the rest of the group receded from the hallway and ascended the stairs to the exits that would lead them home to their families. "We'll have to take care of the Department's records before we go through with this. It's going to be hard enough to run from them without all of the information they have on us helping them along." Bennet shifted uncomfortably.

"I can take care of that," Sylar carefully agreed, knowing that records weren't really the issue his former task manager wanted to discuss.

"I don't need abilities to know what you're going to do, Sylar," he started, eyeing him with an unreadable expression.

"I'm going to do what I have to," Sylar answered, unsure of where the conversation was going. Bennet had become nearly as proficient at blocking his readings as Claire was.

"You're a lot of… _things_, Sylar, but you've never been stupid. You know you two can't be together." He involuntarily scowled at the man in the horn-rimmed glasses. Was it really necessary to rub it in his face? "You're going to break her heart aren't you." It was stated so much more as a fact than a true question. He sighed heavily and avoided Noah's unrelenting gaze.

"I know what you're going to do because I know what _I_ would be willing to do for Claire. Everyone," he chuckled lightly to himself, "everyone keeps telling me that you love her." Sylar snapped his attention back to the man leaning against the wall so casually before him. "I'm not sure if you're really capable of human emotions, but I can see _something_ there. Honestly, it's enough to scare the hell out of me… But it's also enough for me to know that you're going to put her before you."

"Why, Noah Bennet, are you trying to say that you trust me?" He didn't bother trying to fight the smirk.

"Don't push it," he replied flatly. There was a long pause before he added, "I trust that you'll do the right thing for _her_, _this_ time." Something like gratitude flowed between them then and for once Sylar really didn't know what to say. "I still don't like you," Noah grumbled as they both turned and headed for the stairs.

"Wouldn't feel right if you did."

* * *

><p>Sylar couldn't quite shake the feeling that someone, or something was watching him as he made his way to the old watch shop that day. His senses were honed to that of a predator, and as such he found himself finely attuned to an awareness of other possible hunters. But at the same time he was also hard pressed to care. What else could the world throw at him to make his life any more miserable? None the less, that same hair raising feeling followed him all the way back to the D.S.R.E.C., and then to Kline Enterprises several hours later.<p>

"The goal is not to kill anybody. We're going to do everything we can to push the Department's forces back and hold them off of Sylar, but we don't want to actually kill these people. Injuries will be unavoidable, but try to remember that these people are just innocents following orders and doing their job."

Whitlocke listened to Peter Petrelli's instructions to the group gathered in front of the magnificent tower of shining steel and glass in silence from her shadowy perch across the way. Peter looked exactly the same as when she had seen him yesterday, but the others… It shouldn't have surprised her how young they all seemed. Parkman, Suresh, Strauss, and Edgar… She quietly scoffed at herself. Except for Bennet, his partner, Lauren, Angela, and Coolidge, she had seen all of the fallen heroes regularly; and _not_ in the best of circumstances. Her hand absent-mindedly clutched her jaw where not that long ago Mohinder had gotten close enough to knock it loose.

_So this is where it all began, the dive from saviors to lawless renegades_. One singular thought clung to her mind repeating itself incessantly. _How different would the world be if Claire Bennet was the one to sink to the bottom of the ocean instead of Kline_?

A slim silver cell phone was brandished from a back pocket. The communications device was abused and sorely outdated where she had come from, but with any amount of luck it would still operate in this time. "Kline Enterprises, please," Whitlocke directed when she reached an operator. "Mr. Kline's office, extension 2314... Hello, Lucius. I have some valuable information for you. Claire's body is being hidden on the roof of your very own building right now, and her merry band of heroes have come to take her back. I suggest contacting the Department and sounding the full alarm. Do whatever you have to in order to stop them." Only moments later would the Department's forces arrive. The corners of her mouth twitched slightly when Sylar arrived, scratching at the back of his neck.

* * *

><p>Claire pulled back from the hungry kiss to look him in the eyes. Under the influence of Miranda's power infusion blackness had pooled in them masking the deep molten brown that could so easily pierce her being, but she saw much more than that. Where she knew his body stood she observed a molecular breakdown of everything that Sylar had ever been, was, and could be. Burning points of energy flared out around him like twinkling stars of dark blue flame. If such a thing as a soul existed she believed that she could touch his then. It was hard, but vulnerable, strong, but soft, full of screaming terrors and regrets for every wrong that he had ever committed, but fueled by one carefully guarded scrap of intense loving good that shone so much brighter than all the rest in that moment. And the way he gazed back at her, had she been able to die, would have made her heart stop and done the trick. He devoured her every detail seeing as deeply into her as she did him. Waves of emotion washed over them like steadily turning tides in an oceanic storm. They could feel everything the other felt and projected it back again.<p>

Her breath was stolen away the instant he placed that silly length of yarn around her neck; a piece of Miranda's time map imbued with memories of his life. To anyone observing, the gift may have seemed nonsensical or even trivial, but the truth was in the metaphor. He was giving his life to her, freely. His final act as Gabriel Gray.

Claire had finally come to terms with the full extent of her feelings for the man. For better, for worse, as a monster, or her dark angel, he was hers and just as surely, she belonged to him as well. "I lo-" she had started to declare the one thing she knew he had desired and coveted more than any bit of power he might ever collect, for someone to really care about him, the whole him, the good, the bad, and the bloody. But unsteady fingers came to silence those words before they could be spoken aloud. He had already felt it, but hearing it tumble from her lips was more than he could bare. There was a treacherous sadness in those eyes. The grief of a man on the precipice of having everything, and sacrificing it for the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Claire had desperately pleaded with him not to carry through with what he had felt was a necessary evil, but even as she watched the bodies fall all around them, it wasn't the loss of life that threatened to tear her heart open for all to see. Sylar collapsed onto his knees looking around at the chaos and destruction that had been so simply wrought by his hands. He had mercilessly slaughtered them all. And the darkest, sickest parts of him had enjoyed it.

Maybe Luke was right. He _was_ a killer. It _was_ his nature.

Hot stinging tears rolled down her cheeks endlessly while that last shred of goodness in him flickered. He could no longer be Gabriel. Only the broken psychopathic Sylar remained. And God help her, she still loved him.

_Can you feel that?_

_Yes._

He turned his dead eyes on her, once warm and comforting, then harshly cold and cruel. "Is this what you want? Look at it!" Sylar flashed to her side and gripped her face so that Claire was forced to stare at the piles upon piles of death. "Is that what you really want? You want blood on your hands? Because that's all you're _ever_ going to get with me!"

Heat radiated off of his seething body as he stared down at her. Claire wanted nothing more than to wrap her arms around his waist and rest her tired head on his chest for reassurance, but he roughly pushed her away when she tried. "Whatever it is that you think I can give you, I can't. It's over, Claire. You're safe now, and it's time to forget about me." Hurt welled up in her gut. Sylar turned from her to walk away, a fist clutched tight just over his heart that shared her pain, and that rejection morphed into rage.

A light-driven lasso latched around his waist, halting him in his tracks and spinning him around to face her whether he wanted to or not. "Did it ever occur to you that maybe I didn't need to be _saved_? That maybe I was better off dead?" _Better dead than having to feel like this…_

_Time for plan B then. Cruel to be kind._

He laughed darkly at her. "Where would the fun be in that? If you were dead, I wouldn't have anyone to play games with anymore." Sylar crossed the distance between them, eyes growing wild and dangerous, and placed a rough hand on the side of her face. "Eternity is a long time, Claire." He leaned in to whisper in her ear, "And baby, I'm just getting started."

"Is that what this was to you, a _game_?" she spat at him.

"Every minute, Claire Bear. You swore to spend your life trying to kill me, and instead I made you betray _everyone_ you ever cared about by loving me. Truth stings like a bitch, doesn't it?" Harsh. She felt, not like she had been slapped really, but like he had hammered her face in with a freight train. Claire bubbled over with white-hot malice and found herself stabbing an energy spike through his arm where that ridiculous tattoo resided.

"Oh, Claire," he chuckled at her, wincing away the temporary pain, "that's not playing very nice now is it?"

"You moved your kill spot again."

"Well, I couldn't have so many people knowing how to do away with me, could I? Or _maybe_, it was never really there to begin with." He tapped a finger on her forehead with a wicked smirk.

"I _will_ find a way to kill you," she solemnly vowed.

"There's my girl." Sylar tangled his fingers in her hair and crashed his lips down onto hers, savoring her revulsion. "I knew I could make you a killer. Bring you down to my level until you were just like me. It just took a little time and patience, and not even as much of that as I thought it would. It's almost disappointing how easy you were to corrupt." Sirens howled in the distance signaling the arrival of help. She only looked away for a moment, but it was long enough for him to disappear.

Emergency medical personnel, fire fighters, police, and Department officials swooped over the scene in force, snapping pictures and entering evidence into their logs. Faceless investigator after investigator flocked to Claire to take down their reports.

"Ms. Bennet, we need you to explain what happened here."

"Sylar… He… He killed them all." She mumbled, pulling the blanket they had given her closer. She was completely emotionally drained, but blissfully numb because of it. Pleasantly empty. A contented shell of a person. It was better than having to _feel_ for a while.

"And what about the others?" Claire looked up in confusion. "We have security footage that shows Peter Petrelli, Mathew Parkman, Mohinder -"

"They were manipulated. It was all a game to him. Some sick, twisted game to screw with us. He… duped us all into helping him." That's when they would nod in that condescending way that wanted to appear understanding, but only told her that they thought she had been traumatized and somehow lost her connection with reality; that her statements wouldn't be taken seriously.

_I'll deal with it tomorrow._

* * *

><p>A few hours later Claire was finally released to go home. Sylar took another pull from his liquor bottle while he watched two D.S.R.E.C. agents help her duck into an escort vehicle from his shadowy perch on a nearby tower.<p>

"You know we can't actually get drunk, right?" He had been so intent on observing the fallout that he hadn't even been aware of Peter's approach. The sudden sound of his voice nearly had Sylar out of his skin.

"I don't mind trying though." He gave a desolate smile to the mouth of the bottle and drained it. Giving the empty glass a depressed shake, he shrugged his shoulders to nothing in particular and tossed it over the side to crash into the street several stories below. Peter frowned at the blatant carelessness, but knew better than to say anything about it at that moment.

"I take it, it's over then?" Sylar heaved a heavy sigh and turned away to look at something that wasn't really there. So long as he didn't have to meet Petrelli's eyes it didn't matter.

"She tried to kill me again."

"What did you have to say?"

"The most horrible thing I could think of." Peter nodded in quiet understanding. "Are you here to take me down for what I did?"

"Nope." He jammed his hands in his pockets and shifted back and forth on the balls of his feet until Sylar looked back at him questioningly. "I knew what you were going to do the whole time." That earned him an incredulous look. "I've known you for what? Ten years now? Five of which I literally spent locked in your head. I know you, Gabriel -"

"Don't call me that. Not after what I've done." Peter crouched down to a sitting position next to the dark man leaving a close but respectable distance between them.

"I know you, Sylar. Better than anybody. And you can't fool me."

"Then why did you still agree to go through with it?"

"Because I also know about the blood bags you left down there to help revive those people with." They both pretended to pick at imaginary pieces of lint for a moment. "You did the right thing, you know. For Claire."

"Doesn't feel like it."

"I know."

"I… I enjoyed doing it, Peter. Not saying those things to her, but _killing_ them. I _liked_ it. It felt good to just... let go."

"We all have our demons, Sy. Yours are worse than most, but it doesn't mean you're not a good man underneath it all." He snorted rudely at that idea. "Sylar," Peter waited to gain his eye contact before continuing. "You gave up your chance at being able to be happy, with Claire, maybe with a kid and family in the future so that you could put everybody else's well-being before your own. Believe it or not, that _does _put you in danger of being a good man. A real hero even."

"Don't push it, Petrelli." They both shared a wry smirk before Sylar's face clouded over again. "You shouldn't pretend like you were okay with the idea of me being with her." Peter ran his hand through his hair distractedly.

"Five years ago I wouldn't have been. Hell, _last _year I wouldn't have been. But we've all changed a lot since then. I've seen _you_ change. And… I don't know, the way things have been going, _maybe_ you should have been." Another wide-eyed stare of incredulity questioned his sanity.

"You've been just about everything for her. You've been her nightmare, and her savior. You've been her uncle," _snort_, "her father," _groan_, "her friend, and her partner. For whatever reason you guys keep getting shoved together. Like it or not you're pretty much constants in each other's lives. And besides, that ridiculous tattoo has to mean something, right?"

"That was not _my_ choice." Peter cracked up a bit at the serious tone of his statement.

"I know." The slightly lightened mood ended when Sylar lifted the sleeve of his shirt to look at the ink out of habit. His tattoo had changed. Claire's shining face remained, but another had appeared behind hers. Dark flourishes of hair curled wildly around an absent-minded girl with surprisingly feral eyes, even without color to accentuate them properly.

_Miranda. _He jerked his sleeve down again and buried his face in his hands in frustration.

"I'll make sure she's taken care of." Maybe it was the tone he used. Perhaps it was just one of his extra senses kicking in. Whatever it was, Sylar snapped his head up to look at Peter with narrowed eyes of suspicion. But not quick enough to pick up on what was really happening before the needle stabbed into his neck.

**To be continued...**


	3. What He Deserved

**2**

**What He Deserved**

* * *

><p><em>December, 2012<em>

"There we go," the dark skinned woman doctor shined at her. "We can't give you any anesthetics since there's no way to know how it might affect your… condition," _there's that word again_, "so I didn't want to try giving you stitches. This liquid sealant should fix you right up though."

Claire remained silent and contemptuous as the doctor moved on to cleaning the scrapes on her hands and nursing the tender skin around her wrists where the cuffs had rubbed it painfully raw. She had finally been released to take a shower, with no less than six armed guards aptly watching, and given a fresh set of prison garb to change into, consisting of off-white sweat pants and a t-shirt that were too large because the Department didn't keep smaller sizes in stock. She wished that the hot water and soapy bubbles could have washed away her problems and this terrible dream, but once her time was up she had to open tired eyes to the same miserable scenery.

Sure, she was getting favorable treatment, much more than any other convict would have ever received, but it didn't help to make her stay within the Department's facilities any more comfortable. The doctor before her had even convinced the powers behind the scenes to relieve her of her bindings, citing that free movement was somehow paramount to her recovery. In a way that surprised Claire somewhat that they had agreed to anything that would help her "recover". It had become fairly clear that_ that_ was not a top priority, or possibly not even wanted at all for that matter.

Construction workers slipped past the viewing window of her cell hauling a long suspension beam. Under normal conditions the prison cells of Level 5 were sound proof, but the racket of what they had been building on the other side of the block had plagued her for days. She couldn't sleep and that was all she really wanted to do. _We're running out of time._

* * *

><p><em>September, 2011<em>

"Damn it, Noah. What the hell?" Sylar was more than a little agitated as he turned on the man in the horn-rimmed glasses holding a freshly emptied syringe.

"I thought you said this would knock him out?"

"You have to get him with the beta blockers first, and _then_ the tranquillizer," Peter groaned, palming his face in shame for the other man.

"Seriously?" Sylar looked between the two betrayers with wide-eyed disbelief. "You lied to me, Petrelli!"

"What was the one I just gave him?"

"The tranquillizer. Better give the other one to him before his regeneration burns it out of his system. Didn't the Company teach you anything?" Sylar climbed to his feet and Peter followed his movements cautiously. Noah pulled a second loaded syringe out of his pocket and jabbed him again.

"Ow, son-of-a," Sylar cursed them both, rubbing his neck irritably even though the wound ceased to exist nearly instantly.

"I didn't lie to you, Sy. I said that _I _wasn't here to _take you down_."

"We were more about tazers… and René helped quite a bit," Noah admitted somewhat sheepishly.

"Trust me, Sylar. This is for your own good. For Claire." Peter was ready to defend them when the dark man prepared to attack, but instead he found himself rushing to help his reluctant friend easily to the ground as the drugs began to take effect.

"I… _really_… hate… you guys," he finished, nodding off.

"Remind me to tell Suresh that he should really label this stuff better," Noah mumbled as they looked down on the fitfully sleeping Sylar.

"How's Mom?"

"Three sheets to the wind," Noah grinned slyly.

"Figures," Peter muttered rubbing his face in fatigue.

"We should probably make this quick. When I left she was rambling to Lauren and Emma about the 'good old days' and swearing up a storm." He huffed in agreement and heaved Sylar's unconscious body over his shoulder.

"Good thing… I've got your… strength because you're _still_ a heavy bastard." Peter garbled a few more unintelligible curses under his breath as he shifted to gain his balance. He grabbed Noah's hand and sped them both away into the darkness.

* * *

><p>As soon as the car carrying Claire Bennet had disappeared from view, Whitlocke stepped out from the shadows where she had been carefully observing the Department's clean up crews. She spotted a woman roughly her own size and made haste to stealthily snatch her, wrapping a dark tendril around her mouth so that she couldn't scream, and dragged her back into the darkness.<p>

"It's really too bad that you had to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, but your death won't be vain. You're serving a higher cause tonight." The woman naturally turned a pair of watery, terrified eyes on her, but to no avail. Whitlocke had already justified her death in her own mind and would feel no remorse for the taking of an innocent life. With a swift motion that she barely had time to register, her neck was snapped as easily as kindling and her limp body flopped to the ground. _Just one more casualty from the fire fight tonight._

She quickly stripped the woman of her standard issue blue cover-all uniform and pulled it on over her own clothing. Whitlocke adjusted the matching Department hat so that the bill dipped low over her face and pulled her pony tail through the back. As long as no one caught a clear view of her face they would never suspect a thing. _Now, where did he put them…_

Whitlocke stepped out into the open lot, brightly lit by the Department's spot lights and an evening news helicopter with a boldness that is only warranted by those who have nothing to lose. She walked amongst the others in matching uniforms without anyone taking notice of her presence and quietly searched the area for something specifically left behind, unnoticed yet. _Bingo._

Two transfusion bags of dark red blood were barely concealed by the side of the decorative stone sculpture depicting the Kline Enterprises logo. "We won't be making _this_ mistake again," she mumbled to herself as she retrieved the mementos and tucked them just inside of her uniform.

"Hey," a voice called to her. She froze in her tracks, heart jumping in pace. "Can you give me a hand with this one?" Whitlocke turned around to see an older male struggling to shift one of the fallen bodies into a black body bag.

"Yeah, no problem," she said with a shining smile, taking care not to let the light expose her features hidden by the cap.

"What a mess, huh? They're calling it a terrorist strike now. Some rogue group of 'specials' that hate capitalism or something like that." The old guy shook his head shamefully. "What's the world coming to?"

She made a throaty noise of distaste and finished assisting him with the body's transfer, zipping up the bag, and hailing one of the crew members pushing a gurney to cart the victim away. The second the older man's back was turned to care for another of the lifeless agents, Whitlocke slinked away with her prize.

* * *

><p>Noah hesitantly nudged the door to Peter's apartment open, gun drawn and ready in the event that Department agents had beaten them to the location. He edged inside slowly but only found their band of comrades waiting, their attention rapt on the television so that none of them had even noticed the others' return.<p>

"In breaking news, the Department of Safety and Regulation for Enhanced Citizens responded to a terrorist attack made on Kline Enterprises tonight." The news anchor faded to live coverage of the demolished area from a helicopter's perspective. A small fire still burned around the wreckage of one of the Department's choppers, and specialist crews could be seen organizing the retrieval of body bags strewn around the lot. "A group of terrorists attempted an attack on the company about three hours ago, all of them _enhanced citizens_. The president of the corporation personally received a threatening phone call only moments before the attack commenced. We are being told by officials of the D.S.R.E.C. that the hostiles made demands for the company to cease their research and funding of those with abilities, or they would have to act with deadly force to stop them." A computerized voice recording took over the audio of the broadcast.

"_We are the resistance against those that would oppress 'specials'. We know that your company profits from the research of people like us, developing weapons to be used against us. We are not second-class citizens, and refuse to be treated as such. If anything, we should be put ahead of the so-called 'civilians'. We are the progression of evolution. We're smarter, stronger, faster, and we _will_ use our abilities to stop anyone that tries to hold us down, even if it means killing."_

"The D.S.R.E.C. responded promptly to the threat and valiantly staved off the terrorists' attack on Kline Enterprises, however in a tragic turn of events, many of the brave agents sent in for the rescue mission fell as casualties to the 'Resistance' forces. The death toll has yet to be made public, and many are still considered to be missing in action." The beaming anchor returned to the screen with an irritating smile and a report that they would be hearing directly from a Department official at a live conference in a few minutes after commercial messages.

"What the hell? Did somebody make that call? Because I know I didn't." Peter's voice startled the group of edgy heroes, nearly everyone jumping at the sudden diversion of their attentions.

"Peter!" Emma called out, rushing from her position on the end of the couch to be by his side. "Oh my God, Sylar. Is he hurt? What happened?" She frantically lapsed between speech and sign language in a hurry to get her concerns across.

"He'll be fine, Em. He's just taking a little nap."

"They must have staged that call. The Department probably recorded it after… After everything was already over. Probably something to cover their own asses." Noah holstered his weapon and moved towards a frustrated looking Lauren. Peter made his way through the overly crowded apartment to his bedroom and plopped Sylar's body onto his bed without much grace. Emma immediately began fretting over the dark man, placing a soft palm over his forehead to check his temperature and feeling for a pulse.

"Seriously, Emma. He's going to be just fine," he reassured her again, stealing her hands away to wrap her up in a generous embrace.

"Good Lord, how much did you give him?" Mohinder asked with some concern, entering the room to check in on their accomplice.

"All of it," Peter mumbled, turning his eyes back to the twitching man on his bed.

"That was enough to kill a man easily twice his size!"

"Or _just_ enough to put a grumpy Sylar down for an hour," he looked past the other two and out the doorway to Noah. "If _that_ long. _Somebody_ hit him with the tranq before his powers were even suppressed. I don't know how much of it got burned up in his system before he actually went down."

"Angela, no, no, that's not a good idea. Ang- Damn it, sit down before you hurt yourself!" Matt's disgruntled voice floated back to them. Emma and Mohinder both rubbed at their faces anxiously when they remembered the temperamental drunk with the gun shot wound in the other room.

"I should probably take care of that, huh?" Peter grumbled. They both nodded in agreement emphatically.

"What the bloody hell happened to him?" Peter almost collided with Edgar as the speedster made his way into the bedroom.

"Nothing, he'll be _fine_," Peter repeated in irritation.

"Oh, Tracey! Did I ever tell you about the time Nathan got lost in Tijuana?"

"Oh, great," Peter ran a hand through his hair, nervously anticipating his mother recounting an embarrassing story about his deceased broth to his ex-girlfriend. He glanced back at Sylar, visibly fighting for consciousness, and worried his lower lip. He _really_ needed to take care of him, but he also had to deal with Angela before she made a mess of sorts. "Hey, um, can you stay with them and watch him for a minute?" There was really no doubt in his mind that Sylar would be extremely angry over his minor betrayal once he woke and leaving Emma in the direct line of fire frazzled his nerves. Maybe if _both_ Mohinder and Edgar were there though, they could subdue him long enough…

"Yeah, sure," Edgar replied somewhat edgily as though he had read Peter's mind.

"It doesn't take a genius to see that they're already spreading anti-'special' sentiment," he heard Lauren claim on his way through the packed living room to his mother. Noah replied with dark mutterings about "propaganda" and "scapegoats".

"Mom, how are you feeling?"

"It's Peter!" Angela exclaimed with glassy red eyes and flushed cheeks. "Tracey, this is my youngest son. My baby." He was taken slightly by surprise when she pulled him in for a tight hug. She hadn't held him like that since he was a child. Tracey peaked her eyebrows and plastered a plastic smile to her face, nodding condescendingly. Peter silently mouthed her a "sorry", and she waved him off. Angela Petrelli was far from being the first drunken person of social and political influence that she had ever had to pretend to be listening to.

"Ma, I need to look at your shoulder."

"Oh, my dear, sweet, Peter. I love you. I know I don't say it very often, but I really do." Somehow she managed to juggle keeping him partially in her lap and taking another long drink from a wine bottle that someone had procured for her.

"Hey!" he snatched the bottle away from her recognizing the label. It was a fairly expensive brand that he had picked up to celebrate his and Emma's engagement once everything was said and done with the night's business. "Good thing I wasn't saving that for a special occasion or anything," he mumbled sarcastically tipping the glass towards the dim light to see that it was nearly gone.

"Everybody, quiet!" Matt hissed, crouching next to the TV and turning its volume up as high as it could go. The news broadcast had returned.

"I believe that I speak for everyone here when I say that we are quite shocked about tonight's unfortunate events." One of the Department's spokesmen appeared behind a podium addressing a crowd of flashing cameras and reporters ready to pounce on the opportunity for a question. "The death toll is standing at 215 brave Department agents. 32 were grievously wounded, and three are still missing in action. Mr. Kline of Kline Enterprises has also been discovered to have gone missing. We've already launched an investigation into his disappearance, but right now all that I can really say on that particular matter is that our hopes are with him that he was not captured or killed by these… _despicable_ terrorists.

"We have managed to identify our suspects, thanks in large part to security tapes provided by Kline Enterprises. Our primary suspect is known as Gabriel 'Sylar' Gray." Sylar's mug shot from when he had been taken by the Company lingered over the screen. "He is to be considered highly dangerous and unstable. We ask that if you see this man, _do not_ approach him, but _immediately_ call the Department's hotline for wanted criminals of _enhanced_ natures." The spokesman nearly spit the word "enhanced" with disdain.

"Several others are also wanted for aiding Gray in these heinous crimes." Pictures of everyone present from the Department's profiles flashed by. "Noah Bennet, Lauren Gilmore, Mathew Parkman, Mohinder Suresh, Angela Petrelli, Peter Petrelli, Emma Coolidge, Tracey Strauss, and Edgar Bradford are all guilty of assisting in the ruthless murders of so many courageous young men and women tonight. Once again, we ask that you _do not_ approach these people. They are _highly _dangerous. But please, consider it your civic duty to call this hotline if you happen to see any of them. We are all working together to stop individuals like this before they can cause any more harm." Another aerial shot panned around the demolished area. Matt perked up for a moment when he thought he saw a familiar figure among the crew members. He looked around at the others still watching the broadcast, but no one else seemed to notice and Peter was distracted with fighting Angela to examine her wound.

"No, can't be," he said to himself, shaking his head. And then another thought crossed his tired mind. Someone was missing. "Pete, where's Claire?"

The other man sighed heavily and slumped his stressed shoulders with a sulky expression on his face. "Some of the D.S.R.E.C. guys escorted her home after she finished giving statements about what happened tonight." Peter looked at Matt with confident sadness in his eyes. "She's going to be alright. She's safe now." _Sylar did what he had to do._ They shared a knowing look, and Matt nodded in understanding.

"Sir, is it true that some of these terrorist cells came from within the Department itself?" one of the reporter's shouted their anxious question loud enough that it could not be ignored and the spokesman shifted uncomfortably.

"Yes. It is true that some of these individuals had managed to infiltrate the highest levels of our organization. While unfortunate, such an occurrence has also shed light on our weaknesses and has given us a unique opportunity to strengthen from within. New policies and standards are already being drawn up to prevent such a terrible disaster from ever happening again."

"What does this mean for the 'enhanced' community as a whole?" another reporter shouted.

"I am unable to disclose details at this time, but we are all affected by such a tragedy equally regardless of whether we have abilities or not."

"Translation: we're all screwed," Tracey said in a huff, crossing her arms and pursing her lips.

"No, we're not," Peter reassured her.

"What are we going to do? This is happening a lot faster than we anticipated, Peter." Matt switched the TV off, unable to stand anymore.

"All of you destroyed your records, right?" Several voices answered with choruses of "yeah", and "of course".

"Good. Without any of our personal information to use against us that will slow them down," he waved a hand to silence Matt before he could rebuke. "Then, we go into hiding for a while until all of this blows over some. We'll lay low. Live out normal lives. Hide in plain sight."

"And how do you presume we do that?" Lauren piped up at Noah's side. Her voice was rough, but she seemed genuinely interested in his ideas.

"Like this," Peter said with a lopsided grin. He telekinetically floated a piece of paper to himself from a shelf in another room and placed it on the small coffee table for everyone to see. He flexed his fingers dramatically and then touched the paper. Ink crawled over the surface of the parchment and twisted into official documentation. What was an ordinary bit of scratch paper before had been transformed into a birth certificate for one Peter Petrova, born in 1978, with an authentic social security number to match.

"Impressive," Noah mumbled, leaning over to take a closer look at the identification.

"When Sylar fixed me and gave me his… _collection_ of abilities… Let's just say that he's been holding out on us a bit. Imprinting is pretty valuable.

"We can all get new identities. Birth certificates, driver's licenses, passports, you name it. We'll spread out so that in case one of us is found, the others will still be able to get away. Stick to lesser populated areas where you're less likely to be recognized. Get low profile jobs, and live as 'civilians'. With the new names and apparent lack of abilities no one would ever suspect any of us.

"Try to avoid airports. If you have to fly anywhere, hire a private charter, and pay for everything in cash. I also suggest keeping your real first name. It's easier to remember and you won't have to worry about accidentally responding to it if someone calls it out on the street. We can all get some prepaid cell phones to stay in contact with so we can warn each other if we have to, but _only_ if we have to. Avoid one another if you can, and never let any of the rest of us know where you are. The less information we have to give, the better."

"Since when did you become a criminal mastermind?"

Peter laughed and tapped his forehead. "Thank you, Sylar."

"Speak of the devil, mate," Edgar popped his head into the room, worriedly. "I think our brain snatching friend is waking up."

Peter dashed into the bedroom to see Mohinder and Edgar both practically sitting on Sylar's arms. Emma sat on the bed near his head sweeping his hair back and humming a peaceful tune. His eyes were still closed but fluttering rapidly, and his body writhed with rebellion against the drugs keeping him under.

"What are we supposed to do with him?" Matt asked popping in right behind Peter.

"I've got an idea," Peter said with a slight smile. He walked over Sylar's side and took a seat next to Emma. Placing a hand on his reluctant friend's head, he closed his eyes and pushed his thoughts into the other mind.

"Oh, _you're good_," Matt praised with a wide grin. Suddenly Sylar's struggles stopped completely and his face relaxed into a pleasantly serene calm.

"Peter?" Emma questioned him with her eyes about what had just happened.

He took a deep breath while he thought about how to explain his actions. "Sylar… He can be a little… rash, impatient sometimes. You know how he is." She nodded, trying to follow his lips. "When I found him earlier he was already second-guessing himself. If I had left him alone he would have gone running back to Claire and we couldn't let that happen. Not after everything we've been through." Peter paused and bent down to pull a painting out from under the bed in order to illustrate his reasoning. The portrait depicted Sylar being locked in combat with a dark haired Claire. He had seen alternate futures before of his niece's spiteful corruption and the image particularly concerned him. After what Sylar had done to cut her off, would Claire have been able to forgive him, and move on? Or would his further pursuit only fuel her hatred for the worse?

"We need him to stay out of the picture. Just for a little while until we can figure out what's going to happen with Claire. He'll be fine, Em, really," he promised her with a consoling smile and a gentle hand on her arm. It never ceased to amaze him how compassionate his fiancé could be. Even though she had never met the evil twisted version of Sylar that they had all spent years fighting with, she continued to care about his well-being after he had fully disclosed to her all of the awful things he had done. In some ways, Emma had come to know him almost as well as Peter. Only two months before the three of them had sat down to dinner together in that very apartment_. _

_"If someone had told me five years ago that you would be in my kitchen with my girlfriend, cooking, I never would have believed it."_

"_Sure you would. You'd just think that I was in the middle of some diabolical plot while I did it. Putting the moves on your girl," Sylar had winked at Emma flirtatiously, and she slapped playfully at his arm, "and probably poisoning your food."_

"_Watch him close, Em!" They all had a round of cheery laughter. Joking about Sylar poisoning me, he had mused to himself. Have we really come this far? Changed this much?_

"I used one of Parkman's favorite tricks," Matt had turned his gaze downward to the floor with a sheepish half-smile, "and put Sylar in a dream. He won't be waking up anytime soon."

"Peter, this doesn't feel right," Emma frowned.

"I know. I wish that I didn't have to do it, but it's only for a little while. A few days, maybe. We have to get this right. We all owe him _that_ much." Had he been awake, the reformed killer may have blushed at the level of reverence all of the faces present looked down upon him with.

"Peter, your mother -" Noah burst into the overpopulated bedroom and paused, noting the new found expression of peace on Sylar's gently sleeping face. "What did you give him?"

"What he deserved," Peter smirked.

* * *

><p>Claire walked down the hall to her apartment in a daze. Her thoughts would have been a tangled mess had she allowed herself to have any. But for the sake of sanity her brain seemed to have powered down all higher thought processes allowing her a brief reprieve from everything that had happened in the last few days. It felt like she hadn't been home in years, and all she really wanted to do was crawl into her bed and shut out the rest of the world.<p>

The key turned over the lock and she twisted the knob to open her door only to have the full weight of her life crush her again. She used to have a nice apartment. A nice, comfortable, roomy apartment with over priced furnishings, and décor that had really turned it into a home for her… and belongings…

Material wealth or possessions were a far cry from being important to her at that moment, but all she wanted was her damn bed and was rudely denied that singular wish as if it were too much to ask of the universe. Black stains of scorched wall paper and paneling covered her walls, and the ceiling was one massive sample of soot residue. All of her furniture had been reduced to charred skeletal structures of what they once were, and mold had begun to sprout in the corners from the water damage that followed the fire.

Remnants of Sylar, and what it was like to be with him.

"_We need to stop."_

"_No."_

"_Yes, we're going to burn the whole building down if we don't."_

"_Let it burn."_

She could still feel the pressures of her body being trapped between him and the wall, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist. She remembered perfectly the feeling of his lips crashing over hers and moving down her neck, the swelling tingle in her stomach as he touched her, the heat of the fire spreading around them. Claire closed her eyes and could still smell him in the air, a distinguished mix of masculine muskiness with the lingering fragrance of ozone that seemed to cling to him everywhere he went. Like the fresh air after a summer storm. And there it was. That blissful numbing sensation that she had enveloped herself in evaporated, and once again she was left with the pain that was so much harsher than anything physical. _So this is what it feels like…_

It felt like she could literally feel the splitting of her heart's tissues as it broke. The only thing that made it worse was that she still somehow expected him to pop up right behind her at any moment. Sylar had figured out how to destroy the indestructible girl and make her feel pain again. So she did what came naturally; what gave her relief.

She screamed. Long, loud, and hard.

* * *

><p>"O'Keefe, have you found Kline yet?"<p>

"Yeah, we managed to locate him thanks to your _generous_ coordinates." He peered over the edge of deep sea drilling unit that they had hired to take them out. The blackness of the ocean's depths were mesmerizing. There was something thrilling about how something so necessary for sustaining life could also be a crushing force of destruction. Chilled winds whipped his coat about and pressed him closer to the railing where long, thick chains dangled feet away. He steadied himself and gripped his phone tighter, fearing he would lose it. "Our team is working on bringing him up now."

"Excellent. Then our plans are running right on schedule." Whitlocke's voice crackled on the other end of the line before it disconnected. Kyle hummed a merry tune to himself as he day dreamed about the rewards he hoped to gain from his service. It wasn't much of a secret that he wanted _her,_ and now that her husband was out of the picture…

Maybe it wasn't prudent to think like that. He had actually liked the man, respected him deeply as a leader even. But what he wants, he gets.

"Got him," one of his team mates announced over the radio. The towing chains fluctuated in the winds making a loud grinding noise as the mechanical pulley came to life with a metallic screech. Several miles beneath the deceivingly placid surface of the Pacific, a heavy steel storage locker rested on a muddy bar. The sides were dimpled outward, but caved inward as well from the unrelenting squeeze of the waters around it. A man flashed a cased light over the dense chains binding it all together and attached a large towing hook to one of them, securing it for retrieval. Sand flared around him as it shuddered in the current, and he carefully grappled himself to the chains so that he would not be left behind. Inside the watery tomb an ancient pair of eyes snapped open.

* * *

><p>Sylar crept through the house as silently as a thief. He could hear her heart hammering in her chest. There was no hiding from him, but it made it so much more fun when she tried anyways. Her jacket was carelessly thrown over the back of the couch in her haste to get away, still warm. He ascended the stair case skimming his fingers over the railing and watched her flee in the same direction through his clairsentience. A mischievous smirk lifted the corner of his mouth when he saw the door at the end of the hallway hadn't been shut all the way. He was so close he could taste it.<p>

With a quick burst of speed he was in the bedroom retrieving the little blonde from the back of the closet before she was even aware of what had happened. Sylar pinned her up against the wall and basked in the glory of his most recent hunting victory. "I win," he whispered playfully in her ear.

"You always win! It's not even fair," she pouted.

"I think I know a way that you can win too," he replied silkily, running his hands down her sides to her hips. She shivered and gasped for breath in response.

"Mr. Gray, are you trying to seduce me?" she asked with a coy grin.

"Only if it's working, Mrs. Gray." He loved the way that rolled off of his tongue. _Mrs. Gray. _He loved the sound almost as much as the sight of the band on her ring finger that matched his own. It had been a long arduous process, but he had finally managed to make her his, and his alone.

"It's definitely working," she whispered back to him, taking his face in her hands and crushing their mouths together. Their kisses were always desperate as though they were afraid the other would suddenly disappear even while they clung to one another.

"I love you," she panted with each ragged breath. He was burning up, heat seeping through his veins, and his gut twisting into an excited knot of adrenaline and elation. Her legs gripped his hips firmly as he swung her around and dropped them both onto the bed.

"I love you too, Claire. Always." Dainty hands traversed an adventurous course beneath his shirt willing the offensive garment away and he was only too happy to oblige her wish. Her _every_ wish. He had never been able to deny either of his girls anything they had ever wanted, and their constant love and attentions were all the reward he needed. Life was perfect and he was happy.

_There's so much love in this house._

Sylar paused for a moment, a strange sensation bubbling up in the dark recesses of his mind. There was something he was forgetting to remember, but what?

It didn't matter. His darling wife's manipulations of his belt buckle snapped his attentions back to her and only her. "Sylar."

"Claire." She was so warm beneath him, her skin telling him stories about how he was the only one she remembered in this way. Nails passionately dug into his back causing him to buck towards her with a wry grin, anticipation quickly building to the boiling point. The sound of the door opening downstairs broke Claire's lips away from his neck and she turned her beautiful face to look in the direction of the sound.

"Miranda's home." Her voice was light and pleasant, but her mouth pouted a little about their interruption.

"Rain check?"

She looked back at him with another coy smile. "Definitely." Claire rolled out from under him and off the bed heading to exit the bedroom. She turned back to him as he was grabbing his shirt from the floor and pointed a commanding finger at him. "Tonight, you are _all mine_." He smirked at her retreating back and pulled his shirt back on before ambling down the stairs.

"Daddy!" the little girl screamed with glee rushing to him with open arms. He scooped her up in a bear hug like it was the most natural action in the world and buried his face in her dark bouncing curls.

"How was school? Did you learn anything new?"

"I learned that my teacher doesn't know anything about physics." The mocking tone in her childish voice was amusing.

"Terrorizing the faculty again?"

"Of course." Miranda's little five-year-old eyes lit up with mischief, their bright blue hue belonging to her mother, but the calculated mechanical processes behind them all his own.

"Such a daddy's girl," Claire beamed, her hair still slightly mussed from their previous engagements.

"Takes one to know one," Sylar retorted, shooting her an impish wink. Yes, life was truly perfect with his daughter in his arms, and his doting wife at his side.

_What did I do to deserve this?_

**To be continued...**


	4. ObiWan and the ZeroPoint Reality

**3**

**Obi-Wan and the Zero-Point Reality  
><strong>

* * *

><p><em>New York, 2032<em>

"You're too late!" she shrieked at him again. Sylar was at a complete loss for anything to say so he only did what came the most naturally. Miranda screamed and cried in grief against his chest, punching wildly at his shoulders as he held her close. Sometimes she reminded him so much of her mother that way. "You're too late!"

Peter ignored the girl's emotional outbreak and sauntered over to a grouping of bodies near the splintered window. He shoved one of them out of the way to expose who he had been searching for. "At least we got one of them." Gripping a fist full of the corpse's hair he pulled Whitlocke's husband into an awkward sitting position. "Second in command, General - "

"_Don't_," Sylar warned, deep menace tingeing his voice.

"What? We made a successful hit on the top tiers of the Alliance's command chain. I figured you'd be particularly glad to see _this one _dead." A cruel smirk crossed his scarred features as they glared at one another. "This is cause for celebration! It's a great day for us!"

Sylar turned his face away from the other sneering man. Peter Petrelli had long ago lost the sense of humanity that made him a hero. The years of endless combat and ethically gray decisions stole away what innocence and righteousness he had left in him. He became a hollow shell of the man with the crooked grin and lopsided bangs that Sylar had known. Losing Emma certainly hadn't helped matters. He felt his own pang of residual grief for the sweet hearted woman that had shown him kindness even when he hadn't deserved it. They had tried to save her, but she had fallen in the first wave of hostility between the Allied forces and their Resistance.

Rebelling against the persecutions of their kind had undeniably been the right thing to do as they had already fought such things numerous times in the past, but the Alliance was a globally unified leviathan, the likes of which had never been seen before. Bringing down the machine was morally correct, but came at a terrible price for all of them. Those that survived the war had to endure the losses of their loved ones and the corruption of their very souls. It was a sad day when Sylar's moral compass was the closest to due north any of them had seen in ages. Villains against villains, that was what it had come to.

He crooned soft soothing words into his progeny's ears, smoothing her hair to calm her. Ando's blank eyes stared at him accusingly. "Miranda," he started in a low, even tone that wouldn't provoke another outburst. "Do you know where she went?"

"Back to the beginning," she mumbled, clutching to him tighter as though she were still a child needing comfort that only daddy could provide. Sylar and Peter shared a knowing look of disturbing proportions. "She took my Hiro. She took him away."

He grimaced trying desperately not to think about what would happen to time traveler once his job was completed. She didn't need to pick up on those thoughts. Ando was still staring at him almost like he was pointing the finger of blame from beyond. He couldn't take it anymore. Sylar reached over to close the man's eyes only to be violently pushed into the wall behind him.

"Don't touch him! Don't you _dare_ touch him!"

Peter moved to close in on Miranda before she lost control, but Sylar shook his head in negative response. It was better to let her blow off a little steam than to do something that may make her react to attack. "This is all _your _fault!" she continued to scream at him, targeting him with a deadly finger that made him wince slightly every time she jabbed it at the air. "If you had just listened to me! If you had just saved the cheerleader like I told you to none of this would have happened!"

"In his defense, it's a little hard to follow cryptic directions when you have no idea what 'saving' actually entails." Peter offered her a smug half-grin like he had won some kind of argument. She turned vengeful eyes on him and the Petrelli joined Sylar at the wall, groping his own throat and choking for air.

"I can fix this… I can _still_ fix this…"

"Miranda, no," Sylar warned. "Remember what happened last time? The butterflies? If you change even _one_ variable, the outcome becomes undeterminable. We know that as _fact_. You don't know what kind of future you could be creating."

"She took him, Sylar. She took Hiro. You know you would do the same thing if Claire…" They both winced. Too many bad memories had caught up with them. Peter slid down the wall gasping for breath and rubbing his abused airway.

"Where are you going?"

"Back to where it all started. If nothing else, I can stop Whitlocke. I can bring her back here where she belongs."

"Miranda," he warned again reaching out to her. She backed away a few steps taking one last look at Ando.

"Give 'em hell kid," Peter chirped with a mock salute and a vicious smirk. A blink later she was gone.

"Seriously, Two-Face? 'Give 'em hell kid'? What the hell was that?" He simply shrugged in response, eyes twinkling with vindictive mirth. "Shit!" Sylar yelled punching at the air.

"I _did_ hope that she would at least take us along for the ride."

* * *

><p><em>New York, 2011<em>

A stream of light filtered through the window with the rising sun and Sylar cracked his eyes open to make sure that she was still there. Claire sighed into his shoulder, "Good morning."

"Morning." She hugged her arms around him a little tighter.

"What time is it?"

"7:03:34." They didn't even bother keeping a clock next to the bed.

"I don't want to wake up yet," she said with a tired smile. He didn't really want to either, never mind that sleep had never come for more than a few minutes at a time for him. There was some part of him that kept waiting for something to happen, to go wrong, or to rudely interrupt the warmth and comfort of their lives. But nothing ever did, and the paranoia that caused was agonizing. _The proverbial shoe has to drop sometime._

He could hear the sound of little feet padding down the hallway. "Miranda's awake." Just on queue their bedroom door swung open, and a streak of pink pajamas and dark tussled hair thudded into their bed between them.

"Time to wake up!" the little girl chirped happily.

"No such thing!" Sylar proclaimed in return, snatching his daughter in his arms and feigning snoring into her ear.

"You need to shave, daddy," she giggled as the stubble on his jaw scraped over her cheek.

"You really do," Claire teased.

"Hmm. Different day, same story." More giggles erupted as he tickled them both, laughing. Sylar retreated to the bathroom for a shower and shave while the girls made their way downstairs to the kitchen. A few minutes later he stepped out of the shower to the refreshing smell of coffee wafting from the downstairs area. He could hear the clinking of dishes and a scraping of chairs at the table. It was all so _normal_.

_But "normal" is the watch word, isn't it?_

With a yawning smile he turned to the mirror and stopped cold. The steam from the hot water had clouded over the glass, streaks of condensation running down the length and scrawling the words _not real._ His stomach turned over into a tight knot and he hurried to wipe the mirror clean. After dressing and sauntering into the kitchen he watched for a moment while Claire set dishes around the table for everyone. _Normal._

"Do you want syrup on your pancakes, sweety?"

"Yup."

"What's the magic word?" Claire asked, holding the bottle of syrup above Miranda's plate.

"Abracadabra."

"Well, that is _a_ magic word I guess," she relented, doling out a healthy serving of sugary brown liquid. Sylar chuckled quietly to himself, catching her attention. Claire flashed him a bright shining smile.

"Decide to forego shaving today?" He muttered an unintelligible response as he poured himself a cup of coffee and took a seat at the table.

"Quick, tell me the Free Energy Theory of the Aether Perspective as it relates to charge and spiral motion."

"Accepting the Zero-Point Energy concept?"

"Nope. We're not creating something out of nothing today." Sylar and Miranda eyed one another over their plates competitively, sizing each other up as though a duel of sorts were involved. He had been trying to stump her for days, but working around her own natural territory left him at a considerable disadvantage.

"Using the Casimir Effect -"

"Oh, no you don't. We're not disputing science at the breakfast table." Claire took her seat with a sigh, unfolding the morning paper.

"There's no such thing as creating something out nothing. You can't generate a wave without something to do the waving," Miranda shot back, illustrating the waving motion with her hand. She stuck her tongue out at him childishly before Claire chided her to eat her food. Sylar grinned into the mouth of his coffee mug. A car horn sounded from outside and Miranda hopped up from her chair, grabbing her school bag.

"Time to go study coloring inside the lines now," she huffed sarcastically while rolling her eyes.

Once he heard the front door close behind the little girl, Sylar turned to his wife with a hungry look in his eyes. "You know… If she's busy at school, and we have the whole house to ourselves," he wagged his eyebrows at her suggestively.

The newspaper fell to the table, Claire's own brow line peaked in interest. He rose from his chair and crossed the circumference of the table to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and leaning down next to her ear. "No need to be quiet," he nipped playfully at her lobe earning a gasp in response. "No interruptions…"

"You're insatiable," she groaned as he planted a lingering kiss at the space where her jaw and ear met.

"Tell me you're not." Claire hummed a little laugh knowing that he was right. Sylar was prepared to make his descent down her neck when her hands reached back to tangle in his hair, but an interruption came along after all. A deep searing pain ripped across his chest. He was vaguely aware of her inquiring as to what the problem was before his knees gave way under him. He fisted a handful of his own shirt, just above his heart in puzzlement when the floor came spiraling upward to meet him.

* * *

><p>Claire wrapped her arms around herself and rubbed the palms of her hands against them for warmth. Fog danced lazily around her feet obscuring the treacherous obstacles of tree roots and fallen debris that frequently hindered her progress. Once again she found herself lost and alone in a stretch of dark woods that refused to grant her freedom from its nightmarish grasp.<p>

"Gabriel?" Not even an echo graced her frantic calls in reply. "Gabriel!" Silence.

She continued to trip and stumble her way through the trees, ignoring the scrapes and scratches of rough bark against her skin until one last snag of a root sent her sprawling face first onto the shore of an all too familiar frozen lake. And there he was, waiting on the other side with his back turned to her as he always was when she finally managed to find him. "Gabriel!"

The icy waters were too thin to traverse as she knew they were, but it never stopped her from crossing anyways. Claire bounded her way over the ice with complete disregard to the sounds of cracking beneath her, the lines of separation splintering outward from each foot fall. A few feet from her target destination the crystal sheeting gave way and she plummeted into the frigid darkness. Intense cold stabbed at her from every direction, sucking the air from her lungs. Turbulent swirling from the undertow tugged her in a downward spiral until she could no longer discern which way was up.

But every time, just before the burning sleepiness consumed her, his arms appeared to take hold of her, dragging her back to the surface. Voices screamed in the distance for her to get away from the monster, but even as the long cuts sliced into his skin, _I Am Sylar,_ she couldn't make herself be afraid. Claire looked up into the cold stone eyes of her personal tormentor and wondered if she would ever see Gabriel in them again.

That was when he began to laugh. Cruel, menacing cackles filled her ears causing shivers to roll over her spine that were not due to the cold. The hands of salvation dunked her back into the water and held her there just under the boundary of life and death. She sputtered for air, thrashing against him, but never strong enough to break free. Sylar would release her to take a breath, bringing their faces inches from one another and then as she would reach for him, submerge her again. Pale bloated bodies of his victims floated up from the depths around her and they too would take turns snaring her, pulling her back into their realm. The lake swallowed her screams, but the waking world could never be so merciful.

Claire startled herself awake after the nightmare encore that had plagued her every night that week. She wiped the chilled perspiration from her brow, glancing around the strange room and taking a moment to remember where she was. The Department had graciously set her up with an apartment in a temporary housing complex used for displaced "specials" after receiving ability training services, rehabilitation, or in some cases incarceration. Fortunately night terrors didn't seem to be uncommon within the building as she wasn't the only one heard screaming in the pre-dawn hours, and no one bothered to complain.

Her tear-stained pillow absorbed her sobs of anguish since there was nobody else to do it. After she had pulled herself together enough to remember how a telephone functioned, she had set about trying to contact everyone that had been involved in the incident surrounding Kline Enterprises. They were being named as high profile members of some kind of terrorist organization dubbed the "Resistance" and needed to be brought forward to set the record straight, or at least be warned of the repercussions that the Department had in mind for their actions. But Mohinder's, Matt's, and Tracey's lines had all been disconnected. Her father had answered after a few paused rings long enough to say that he was going on vacation somewhere outside the states and wouldn't be in contact. He had abruptly hung up on her before she could a word in edge wise, which was still more than Peter had offered. She thought for sure that her uncle would take the time to explain things, but his phone only went directly to an already full voice mail.

She was left completely alone, something that was quickly turning into her worst fear. _Congratulations, Sylar. You can add another thing to the list of ways we're alike._ She imagined being back at college in a room with him and a chalk board. Two additional swishing check marks were applied under his smug hand before turning that irritating smirk on her.

Mental deliberation ensued while her fingers hovered over the speed-dial that would page Sylar's cell. Did she really want to talk to him after everything that had happened? That he had said to her and done? _What the hell? It can't get any worse. _Claire tensely listened to the trilling on the other end with her shoulders hunched stressfully.

"_Hello, you've reached Agent Gabriel Gray with the Department of Safety and Regulation for Enhanced Citizens. I can't answer your call at this time. Please leave your name, number, and message, and I'll get back to you when I can." _

She froze in place, not even breathing, at the beeping tone that signaled her to leave a message. What should she say, or _not_ say? Should she even say anything at all? In an instant her phone snapped shut with a loud _clack_. If she had anything to say at all she would leave it for a time when she wouldn't sound like some kind of groveling idiot.

"_Eternity is a long time, Claire. And baby, I'm just getting started."_

Before she could realize what she was doing the phone in her hand traveled across the room and shattered against a wall. She grit her teeth, viciously biting into her tongue, and strained to choke back the next wave of tears. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and she loathed it. Maybe it wasn't the taste of iron so much as the thought of what she had become, what _he_ had turned her into. Her world became clouded over by a bitter hatred for her own pathetic state.

_I miss him. Stupid, sadistic, son-of-a-bitch murderer and I _miss _him. Why me? Why couldn't he have just killed me, or left me dead, or… Anything. Anything but this perverted sickness._

* * *

><p>Miranda reappeared in a harbor area outside of a line of weathered warehouses. She had hoped against hope that Nakamura would be left alive, but there he was, neck broken, and body cold as ice. She dropped to her knees beside him, pulling his head into her lap and heaving with what would have been tears had she not already cried herself dry before. "I'll avenge you," she solemnly promised, raking his ragged, grayed ponytail back into some semblance of order.<p>

Hiro's corpse was promptly teleported back to his family's burial grounds in Japan. With a subtle wave of her hand, the earth at the back corner of the plot opened, and she gently rested the body of her felled companion into the sacred dirt. After a few praising words to the Kami to take his soul to a better plane of existence, she placed a chaste kiss on his ashen forehead and willed the ground to respectfully close around him. There was indeed a score to settle there, and she blinked away with the bitter taste of revenge in her heart.

"Ando, you can't organize the X-Men series behind the Superman."

"Why not? They're in alphabetical order."

Hiro sighed and took another bite of his licorice stick. "Marvel Comics are completely different from the D.C. Universe. They're should be _different_ stacks." Ando rolled his eyes at his friend's persnickety nature but obliged.

The Japanese duo were hunkered down in Hiro's office at Yamagato Industries. There hadn't been any recent calls made through their Dial-A-Hero line, and Kimiko was busy having a night out with her girlfriends. Nothing of vague interest was showing on the television, and naturally they were both bored out of their skulls. In lieu of entertainment they had taken to sorting through the prized comic book collection, issues upon issues spread out in circles around them. Hiro sensed a bubble in the flow of time and space near him.

"Ando, did you feel that?"

"What?"

"A disturbance in the force." Masahashi shrugged his shoulders and continued to sort through the a stack of _9th Wonders _comics. Hiro took another bite of his licorice, squinting his eyes to take in the details of the office. The bubble he felt swelled and then popped making him jump a little at the unfamiliar sensation of another space manipulator. He dropped his candy stick and when he looked up again from retrieving it a woman stood before them. Ando lifted his eyes slowly from the black booted feet to the lean body enclosed within black body armor, and finally to the pale face of a wild blue-eyed girl with short, mussed black hair.

"_Hello_," he greeted flirtatiously out of habit before Hiro smacked him on the arm.

"Who are you, and what have you come for?" Hiro asked jumping to his feet to face the stranger.

"My name is Miranda Nakamura, and I need your help." She unsheathed the Kensei's sword from its case on her back and knelt before him, presenting the weapon for his inspection.

"Hiro! Your sword!"

To say that shock froze the two men in place would have been a severe understatement. A fellow time and space master arriving, with his coveted possession, baring his bloodline's namesake, asking for his help, and apparently being fluent in Japanese even though she was clearly not of Asian decent…

Coincidence could not have born such events, but perhaps foul play could. Hiro was naturally subject to suspicion taking his katana into his rightful hands. The world they lived in required a certain amount of scrutiny for the sake of safety when other ability gifted persons were involved. Miranda patiently waited in silence, keeping her head bowed and eyes respectfully trained on the floor in front of his feet.

"You come from the future?" She nodded in the affirmative. "And you know us there?" Hiro gestured to himself and Ando, still sitting on the floor in surprise. She agreed again. "Then you must know the code?"

"Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope," she recited looking up at him with a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

"I told you that would catch on," Hiro smugly exclaimed to a disbelieving Ando with excitement. "Yatta!"

* * *

><p>"Sylar? Sylar, baby, wake up. Please wake up."<p>

He opened a pair of groggy eyes and waited for his vision to clear. He hadn't felt pain like that since… What was it? He was overcome with that feeling, pulling at the recesses of his mind like there was something important that he had forgotten to remember.

"Since when do you call me Sylar?" The question was blurted out before his conscious brain could even process the information.

"Oh thank God you're okay. What was that? What happened?" Claire hovered over him sweeping his hair back from his face with concern.

Sylar grabbed her hands and narrowed his eyes at her trying to see something that he didn't know how to look for. He read her mind, but there was nothing there. She was blank, _completely_ blank. "Why are you calling me Sylar?" he repeated, locking their gaze.

"I've always called you that," she answered clearly confused.

"Something's wrong," he muttered to himself. He dropped her hands and climbed to his feet taking in his surroundings for what felt like the first time. The house they lived in, _his_ house. He recognized it from somewhere before.

"Yeah something's wrong. You freaked out and fainted."

"What do you mean I _freaked out_?"

"You were pulling at your shirt and calling my name. You were rambling something about 'not being real', and then you just passed out cold."

_Not real._ Where had he heard that? Sylar shook his head trying to recall what had happened, but it was almost like a wall separated him from the thoughts. Claire followed closely behind him while he wandered through the house touching everything in sight. There were no memories to be seen. How could that be? When he entered the living room area it finally struck him why he remembered the house. _Costa Verde._ He knelt down by the coffee table running his hands over the smooth surface and then looked back at his wife. It was the same house he had taken her ability in, the _exact_ same. He half expected Mr. Muggles to come trotting around a corner.

"I hurt you here," he mumbled, turning his gaze back to the coffee table.

"You've never hurt me," she replied with a decidedly confused look on her face.

"This is where I took your ability. This is where I," he gulped loudly, "cut you open."

"Baby, you never cut me open. You took my ability empathically, remember?" She took his face in her hands and dotted his brow line with adoring kisses. "You could never hurt me."

"Claire, I think we need to get out of here."

"What? Why?"

"There's something…" the thoughts were slipping away from him again and he struggled to hold onto them. "Something… I have to remember _something_…" His feet moved of their own accord, dragging him reluctantly along to the front door. He reached for the handle to open it, but his fingers simply hovered over the brass fixture not quite able to make contact with it.

"Sylar, baby, tell me what's going on so I can fix it." Claire looped her arms around his waist and rested her head on his back. He sighed heavily letting go of a burden that he was unaware he possessed. The hands dangling over his stomach started tracing the boundary line of his jeans sending a shockwave of sensation up his spine.

"Who's the insatiable one around here again?" he asked with a smile in his voice, everything forgotten.

"Well, if you're saying that you don't want me," she released her hold on him and turned to walk away flirtatiously.

"Oh no you don't." Sylar grabbed her arm and spun her back towards him. Claire was lifted up into his arms, her thighs tightly hugging his hips as they stumbled back to the couch. "Tell me you love me," he rumbled against her throat, trailing super-heated kisses along her collar bone.

"You know I do." They collapsed backwards into the soft cushions of the sofa so that she was poised over his lap nibbling voraciously at his ear and tugging the lobe between her teeth causing a low moan to issue from his throat. "I'm _yours_. All yours." Her words were simple and true filling him with a sharp jolt of want. That want quickly morphed into a deeper sense of need when she gyrated her hips against him. Telekinesis popped the string of buttons on her shirt sending them bouncing to the floor with a series of barely audible clinks.

Claire's sweet sun kissed skin flushed beautifully under his caresses. He had to see more of the involuntary reactions to his touch. Sylar flipped them over, burying her into the plush fabric beneath him. A faint tingling tickled the back of his neck momentarily capturing his attentions away from the conquest at hand.

"_Look at me. What am I doing here? This is so stupid. I need to just turn around and go home. One step at a time."_

"Did you say something?" Sylar peeked a mussed head of dark hair over the back of the couch searching for the source of the sound. He felt briefly compelled to go to the door again, but the urge was stifled by the pair of hands pulling his face back downward.

* * *

><p>Claire had closed her eyes, feeling the autumn winds whip her hair about her face. The sun was hovering just above the horizon much like the last time she had been there. She clenched her eyes even tighter to ward off the memory. An action that proved to be futile.<p>

"_I knew you would find me. Even up here."_

"I can always find you. Or, at least I thought I could." She blinked away the tear that threatened to dip below her lashes. "Maybe it was _all_ a lie. You wouldn't give me _that_ much power of you." Claire had attempted to locate him before she had ended up there. Exactly why she had decided to do such a foolish thing was beyond her though.

_She followed her extra sense, obedient to the invisible rope that pulled her in uncertain directions. At one point she had been worried that she had reached her destination in the middle of an intersection when the sensation suddenly stopped existing, but after a moment it picked up again, tugging her even harder another way. Distress? Was that the feeling behind it all?_

_Claire eventually stopped just in front of her uncle Peter's apartment. It wouldn't have been entirely surprising to find him there. Peter was probably the closest thing to a friend that Sylar had ever had. And Emma, having only known him as the tall, dark, and handsome knight in shining armor that had saved her from the clutches of Samuel's carnival was perpetually prepared to sooth his issues with a sandwich and pat on the hand. _

_She listened intently for any sounds that would indicate movement on the other side of the door but found nothing. Since the night at Kline Enterprises everyone had managed to disappear from the face of the Earth, or at least from her. Would Peter and Emma also abandon their lives for the sake of freedom from the Department's persecution?_

_Of course they would, she had chided herself. Knowing that years of mid-level imprisonment would be a best case scenario for them, yes, they would flee to greener pastures until the storm calmed a bit. Then why did her hand float centimeters away from the wood of the door waiting to knock? A ghost of a tingle on the back of her neck prompted her to shift her hair onto her shoulder as she slumped against the door frame not wanting to beg entrance, but not wanting to leave right away either._

"_What's wrong with me?" she asked rubbing her eyes in fatigue. "I can't become this person. I just can't." After a few long minutes of contemplation she had ran the palm of her hand down the length of the door - a silent farewell, and slouched away, utterly defeated._

Irrational whims had brought her back to the rooftop terrace that in some ways had been the location of the first time she had ever voiced her faith and trust in the man that had so savagely broken her heart. _What a bust that was._ Her fingers gripped the rusted railing behind her as she leaned out over the edge to see the traffic and pedestrians far below. They were all crawling around like ants down there, going about their every day lives, blissfully ignorant of pain she felt.

_It's so easy to fall. Just let go and feel the air rushing past you as the ground says hello. Like an angel falling from grace…_ She could identify with that feeling. Taking a tumble from her pedestal and falling from grace into the malicious hands of the devil…

Claire shook her head to clear that thought away. Her fingers slipped in their grip and the turbulent swelling of vertigo exploded in her stomach. Sure, she could walk away from plummeting twenty-some stories into the concrete below without a scratch, but the survival mechanism necessary to human nature still prevailed. She wondered to herself, if she _did_ just let go and allow herself to fall completely, would he magically show up from the depths of nowhere as he was prone to rescue her? Sylar had spared her the inconvenience of having to scrape herself from the sidewalk before. Would he do it again?

_No. No, he wouldn't._

She lifted herself back over the railing and retreated from the tower. Tomorrow was Monday, her first day back at the office since the incident, and she had hours of fitful unrest to catch up on.

* * *

><p>The rest of the day had passed by wonderfully uneventful except for dinner. Sylar had stooped down to give Miranda a hug before taking his seat and noticed that his wrist watch continued to perform in perfect sync with her presence. In a fit of absentminded curiosity he had tapped on the glass and raised it to his ear for a moment before letting his wrist fall next to her face again. No time flux occurred, or anything else out of the ordinary.<p>

"Sylar? Are you feeling alright?" Claire had asked, anxiously eyeing him.

"I'm fine," he replied serenely with a plastered smile.

"You've been acting so strange today."

"He's worried that we're not real," Miranda murmured while she pushed the peas around her plate. He had no idea how to respond so he chose to pretend that he hadn't heard what she said and took his seat peacefully. Claire maintained a blank expression for the rest of their time in the kitchen.

Sylar finished tucking his daughter into bed and shut her door behind him with a whispered "good night" that sounded oddly more like a good-bye in his own mind. He padded his way to his and Claire's bedroom rubbing his temples to will his headache away. Claire was waiting in bed for him flashing a wry grin when he collapsed into the mattress next to her with a heavy thump.

"You ever get the feeling that you've forgotten to remember something?"

"Do you realize that you've asked me that _exact_ same question _every _day now for the last week?"

"Sorry. I just keep thinking that there's something big that I'm forgetting, and I can't figure out what it is. It's driving me crazy."

"All the lights are turned off. The stove is off. Miranda's safely tucked into her bed down the hall. The only thing you have to remember right now is that you've got a wife to take care of." She pulled him into her lap, mischievously peppering the side of his face with kisses. The feeling of forgetfulness drifted away with each touch and he rolled over to face her. Their mouths collided frantically.

"Wait, wait," he paused much to her disappointment. "Why do you always do that?"

"Do what?" she asked slightly breathless and still in the process of removing his shirt.

"Every time I start thinking about… something… What was it?" he shook his head to clear lustful fog. "You always do this. Why?" Claire's lips trembled, hurt blatantly crossing over her lovely features. "Oh, don't cry," he pleaded with her, thumbing away the tears that fell over her cheeks. "Please don't cry."

"You're bored, right? That's why you're acting so weird. You don't want me anymore."

"Claire, come on, look at me." She turned away from him, chest heaving with silent sobs. "Look at me," he demanded a little more harshly than intended. She jumped at the rough sound of his voice and her cries became louder. _Great. I scared her. Fucking perfect._

"Claire," he implored her again while maintaining a carefully calculated tone. "Of course I still want you. I'll _always_ want you," he sealed his promise with a tender kiss to her temple, and then another on her damp cheek, and then another on her jaw. "I love you," he whispered losing himself in the crook of her neck. _Wait a second._

"Why are you crying? That's not like you," he wondered aloud. "You don't do that _that_ easily." She didn't even look offended. Just blank. Sylar nudged her shoulder and noted the lack of reaction. He pushed a touch harder and still received no recognition of the abrasive motion. "Come on, Claire. Get - get mad at me! Hit me! Scream at me! Stab me with something, I don't care. Just… do _something _Claire-like."

But she wasn't acting "Claire-like" at all. Not _his_ Claire anyways. Not the Claire that had the intestinal fortitude to stab him in the chest with a butcher knife. Not the Claire that had the keen savvy to be able to sneak up on him and effectively kill him when no one else could. Not the Claire that kept a stiff upper lip when he had taken her hostage, spewing promises to end him no matter how long it took.

No, she wasn't _his_ Claire. As alien as the notion may have been, he could have sworn that she was behaving more like _Peter's_ Claire. She was so soft, and vulnerable, and innocent like a girl. Not the hardy, levelheaded woman with a cast-iron spine that could stand up to him and be his equal. Sylar found himself to still be completely enamored with her regardless of whether she was the one he had originally come to adore or not, but there was the _something_ that he just couldn't put his finger on. Somehow it didn't feel quite right.

Except the wet kiss she bestowed upon the nape of his neck after smacking him in the face with a pillow when she finally chose to react. _That_ felt right. Very right.

**To be continued...**


	5. Tabula Rasa

**4**

**Tabula Rasa**

* * *

><p>Claire made her way up the concrete walkway to the Department's main office building. Scaffolding wrapped around a section of the primary entryway, construction crew members diligently working to repair the damage it had suffered at the hands of Sylar and Chris during their lock-down blow-out. <em>Chris… Whatever happened to Chris? <em>

The freshly fixed and operating double doors taunted her with memories of life before everything had gotten so overwhelmingly complicated. Not that it hadn't always been "complicated" to some extent.

_Claire and Sylar had arrived at the D.S.R.E.C. campus separately but at the same time. Sylar, with his long strides easily out paced her arriving at the doors a moment before she did and held open the door for her with a motion of courtesy. _

"_What are you doing?" she had asked using a snotty tone as though she expected the monster before her to only offer such an act if he had an ulterior motive. _

"_Attempting to be a gentlemen," he had replied flatly, brows already furrowing in frustration._

"_Whatever. I had no idea that they offered etiquette lessons in hell." Sylar snorted in disbelief and walked in ahead making sure to slam the door in her face when she followed._

"_Sylar, what the hell?" she had half-shouted, rubbing her nose where the glass had struck with a ringing thump that jarred her teeth. He twirled around on his heel, mocking her with an exaggerated sheepish smile, his shoulders shrugged and palms facing upward like an "oops" expression. Claire picked up a decorative trinket that rested on an end table next to the door and chucked it at the back of his head in retaliation when he turned around again. _

_He stopped dead in his tracks, rubbing where the object had hit him, and was instantly in her face. "You're a little infuriating, you know that?" he had growled at her, his chest rumbling with the noise. She offered him the same expression of "oops" that he had given her before and immediately started counting to ten in Spanish to block his mind reading ability. She could never let him know that the way his strong, lean body towered over her seething, his scent filling his nostrils, and his intense eyes burning into hers was incredibly attractive. Exhilarating really. Maybe she tempted his patience on purpose occasionally._

"_You're an ass," she spat at him._

"_And I can't possibly imagine why you're still single. What kind of man wouldn't want to stick around for such a _sparkling_ personality?" he had retorted sarcastically. She huffed at him, crossing her arms in defiance, and he grunted in exasperation, rolling his eyes and going on his way._

"_Jerk!" she called after him._

"_Bitch," he had tossed over his shoulder as he stalked away. _

Events like that had occurred often enough that people had given up on staring at them curiously. It had become understood that the constant fighting and tension were just another facet of their already dysfunctional relationship. More than once Claire's first partner had suggested that they needed to, well she wouldn't repeat his exact crude phrasing, but it was implied that they should have slept together and gotten it over with. They had avoided one another's eyes for days afterward, both blushing profusely when they had accidentally met anyways.

Claire cleared her throat of the tightening that was beginning again and marched through the doorway to the front desk where she signed in. Another memory of seeing Sylar and Peter standing there chatting idly on one of the rare occasions that her uncle had managed a reprieve from his desk rushed back at her. He wouldn't be there either. She quickly made her way to her office not stopping to visit the hallway where Sylar had tripped over a trash can because he was checking out a secretary instead of watching where he was walking.

In the elevator she held her breath so that she wouldn't cry when she thought about the day that he had purposefully made them miss their floor due to flirting with the same secretary and unmistakably judging the shape of her rear through her obscenely thin skirt. She had had to stifle a pang of irrational jealousy then, and she had to again as the same woman passed her fleetingly in the third floor lobby. She had often wondered if the two had ever had a relationship of sorts. They seemed a little _chummy_. Or maybe that was the way it was supposed to be for normal people. Or maybe, she regretfully admitted, that was just her lack of experience in certain areas leading her overcomplicate situations with the male gender. Claire sighed as she approached the door to her office, her trip down memory lane refusing to relinquish her.

_Sylar ducked into her office in a rush, slamming the door behind him and leaning against it to peer through the blinds of her solitary window dramatically. She had looked up from her paperwork, eyebrows creased in question._

"_You remember Carrie?" he had asked in a breathless hushed whisper._

"_The redhead from accounting?"_

"_The one with the," he had rolled his hands over his chest to illustrate a comically large bosom._

"_Yeah?"_

"_She's following me," he proclaimed, still whispering and jabbing his thumb at the window with wide-eyed terror. Claire got up from her desk to peek through the blinds next to him. It was true that the woman in question was probably stalking him. Carrie had an obsessive attraction to the former serial killer going as far as to leave poetry in his locker and presents on his desk, one of which was a rather large and sharp knife. Claire had for the most part successfully avoided the other woman after their first meeting where she had attempted to pry knowledge of Sylar's whereabouts, living arrangements, and phone numbers from her. The way Carrie had stared at her with deadly glares had severely creeped her out as well. How she had ever passed the psychology exam to obtain security clearance was a mystery._

_Claire may have been watching the redhead linger nonchalantly in the hall, but her attentions were solely placed on the man next to her. She could feel the heat radiating out to her from his body, and almost touch him from their close proximity. _

"_Ah, what's wrong? Is the big bad Boogeyman scared of a girl?"_

"_Yes," he had admitted to her with shame in his voice. "That woman scares the shit out of me."_

She laughed wholeheartedly catching the looks of people walking by who were no doubt wondering whether she was cracking. _Not today, _she thought to herself. _Not today._ But she couldn't go on working in that place either; not with every room, and hall, and elevator haunting her with what she had lost before she even really had it. _Oh Gabriel Gray. What have you done to me?_

Cracking open the door to her office alone had been nearly enough to undo her. She could still smell him in the air there. Almost _feel_ him. She looked over her shoulder for a moment half-expecting to see him hovering over her, but only found disappointment again. Flipping on the light, she suddenly became very aware of several boxes piled on her desk. She may have become disgruntled thinking about the work load that had been dumped on her over the length of the previous week if the boxes hadn't been distinctly marked as belonging to the records department.

Claire pulled one of them down from the stack and dropped it into her chair for inspection. It was full of Sylar's dossiers that the D.S.R.E.C. had kept on him as well as some salvaged from the Company before. The complete collection of all of his records, files, profiles, analysis, and testing lay in front of her, and even a few sparse personal belongings. She didn't bother fighting the smile that came to her lips when she removed a photograph of them together where they were posed back to back in a dorky _Charlie's Angels _manner. Charisma had taken the picture just after the completion of their first mission for the newly founded Department. There were more pictures, one of the entire First Response team standing at attention, and then one of her, Sylar, and Peter crowded around the Petrelli's tiny kitchen table. Emma must have snuck that shot in. She giggled, picking up a photo of Sylar and Emma goofing off together.

The rest all seemed to be of her. Picture after picture of Claire smiling and waving, or stained with blood after a mission. There was an incriminating image of her slouched over the end of a cot behind the bars of a French prison cell after an embarrassing case of mistaken identity during one their chases. She remembered him snapping that one on his phone, laughing at her from the other side. Even one of her that must have been taken very early in the morning before she had had her caffeine. Her hair was a tangled mess, she wasn't wearing any make up, and was in the act of giving the camera a one finger salute with a desolate look on her face. She had no idea that he had taken so many of them. _I can't do this. _

She had to squish that last glimmer of hope before she was crushed again. Claire began to buzz around her office packing up the boxes before she had even become consciously aware of the plan forming in the back of her head. She couldn't work around all of those memories. She couldn't live with the thought of him hanging over her shoulders every moment of the day, waking or not. She couldn't live with the pain of being without him after finally, _finally_ realizing that what she needed had been there all along.

She could quit her job. Hell, she could pound a railroad spike through the back of her skull. But that would be admitting defeat. That would be running away from the problem. That would mean being a coward, and weak, and everything that he had _not _wanted in her. Well turnabout was fair play. She would be _exactly_ what he had wanted, and she would face the problem head-on. After all, forgetting about him wasn't cheating. He had already forgotten about her.

Claire was surrounded by some of the most powerful agents in the world in an institution that was second to none when it came to removing "special" related smears of criminal activity. A _leviathan_, and she would harness its powers to bring down the proverbial white whale. She would become Ahab herself and catch the most infamous murderer on the planet. She would make him pay for everything that he had ever done to her and everyone else. Make him _regret it all_. Claire hesitantly removed the length of blue yarn that had continued to rest around her neck and placed it on top of the pile of pictures before replacing the lid of the box with shaking hands.

With the stack of boxes that rose far above her line of sight, Claire marched down to Suresh's lab and grabbed the last remaining syringe of his power blocking formula, stuffing it into her pocket. And then before she knew it, she was nudging another office door open on the other side of the building, a ghost whisper of pain seeping into her chest as she did so.

The Haitian glanced up from a pile of paperwork on his desk with only mild surprise in his eyes. Knowing him, he had probably expected a maneuver like this on her part. René didn't speak much, and a few thought him a simpleminded man, but Claire knew far better. He was quite intelligent and perceptive, almost empathetic in some ways. While his work with the Company, and then the Department required him to remove the memories of people who weren't willing to volunteer for the process, he had never lost his sense of right from wrong, and he would know that she didn't just want to forget. She _needed_ to.

Claire dumped the pile of boxes onto the corner of his desk with an agitated huff and a scowl on her face. "I want you to take it all. Everything of _him _after the carnival." He carefully eyed the boxes that she had deposited and then studied her eyes for a moment with apprehension.

"That is a lot to lose, Claire. Are you sure that _that_ is what you really want?"

"_Everything_," she growled with iron conviction.

Claire removed a syringe from the pocket of her suit jacket and popped the cap on it. After all the events that happened to her over the course of the last month she absolutely detested anything to do with needles, but she was going to make sure that the Haitian's touch stuck that time.

They gave the formula a moment to work through her system, giving her a slight sense of being drained. She grabbed a letter opener from its holder and dragged the blade over the sensitive skin on the back of her hand. It stung like the dickens. She caught herself marveling at the drop of blood that dripped down her hand when the wound didn't immediately close back up. René moved to perch on the edge of his desk in front of her and motioned for her to sit down in the chair there.

"Are you _absolutely_ sure about this, Claire?"

"More than anything." Her tone nearly suggested begging which wasn't far from the truth. Sylar was going to kill her without the benefit of being there to watch. The Haitian nodded in acceptance and placed his hand over her forehead. Claire instantly fell back into the chair sound asleep.

Crossing back around the desk René picked up his phone and quickly dialed a number. "Hello, Peter… Yes, she's here… She says that she wants to forget everything about Sylar after the carnival… Yes, I know… No, no, she's quite alright for the moment. She's taking a nice little nap… We'll be awaiting your arrival then."

* * *

><p>Peter drooped his shoulders and rubbed at his eyes in fatigue. He and Emma had just seen Noah onto his charter plane out of the country. Besides themselves and Matt, Bennet had been the last of the group remaining. The week had been long and fraught with anxiety. Everyone had needed new identities, documentation, back stories, plans, relocation, more plans, places to stay, money, and back-up plans. Peter, being the one to do the heavy lifting on most of it was absolutely exhausted.<p>

"You need to rest," Emma signed to him. He chuckled to himself about how she could make the hand language _sound _stern.

"I will, I will," he promised her with a sweet kiss. "I just need to make sure that Matt can get out alright on his own, and then we'll go back to the hotel. It'll make _you_ feel better just to be bored watching _me_ sleep." They shared a quiet giggle.

A serious expression rolled over her face. "What about Sylar?" she asked.

_Oh hell. I can't believe I forgot about Sylar._

They had left the apartment while handling everyone's getaway plans and hadn't made it back to grab their things yet. Peter shuddered at the thought of having left him alone and vulnerable in his sleep state for an entire week. What if the Department had shown up? Or the building burned down? Or? The vibration of his cell phone in his pocket caught his attention away from the "what if" scenarios. Looking down at the caller I.D. he saw that it came from a secure line inside the D.S.R.E.C. which he was unfortunately already rather familiar with. He sighed again at the call that he had been dreading. Emma watched nervously, worrying her lower lip while Peter talked with the Haitian about his niece's condition.

After he had hung up with René, Peter turned around and speed-dialed Parkman on their new line. "Hey, Matt, it's Peter… Once bitten, twice shy," he recited their new code phrase to avoid sound manipulators or shape shifters. "How close are you to being able to leave? Okay, okay, good. You can make it out on your own? Alright, well, you think you can wake Sylar up for me before you go? I'd do it myself, but I have to take care of Claire first… Yeah, she'll be fine. She's just ready to forget about him and move on… Yeah, I called it. Think Mohinder's going to cough up the twenty bucks for our bet?" He laughed at the thought that the scientist had second-guessed his ability to predict what his niece would do. "Great, give me a call after you get him out, or if you have any problems with him… Alright, later man."

"This still feels wrong," Emma repeated for the umpteenth time.

"I know." And he did know. But when the fate of world rested in his hands, Peter had to do what was right for the majority; even if the little decisions that lead the way filled him with guilt.

* * *

><p>Sylar doodled invisible designs across the soft skin of Claire's arm. His head rested against her sweat coated breast, they're exhausted but temporarily sated bodies sticking to one another. Fingers lazily combed through his disheveled hair. He had never felt more comfortable or at peace in his life.<p>

"Time to wake up, baby."

"I am awake," he mumbled dreamily, spelling out the words with kisses.

"No, it's time to _wake up_. Sylar you have to wake up."

"You can't seriously tell me that you're ready to go again already," he chuckled, turning his face upward to look at his darling wife. What he found made his blood run ice cold. Elle Bishop was looking down at him in Claire's stead. He jumped out of the bed and away from her, backing himself into a corner faster than even he would have thought possible. The treacherous wench waved her fingers at him in greeting.

"Hey, baby, miss me?"

"Elle, what the -"

"I told you that it was time to wake up, Pookie-bear."

"Where's Claire?" he demanded.

"Out there somewhere," she gestured meaninglessly in the direction of the bedroom's windows. "Probably yucking it up with her merry band of do-gooders right now. Big bad Sylar got duped again." Elle wrapped herself securely in a sheet while he was busy shaking his head in disbelief. This couldn't be happening, whatever it was. He needed to find his wife, needed Claire, needed to see his family safe in his arms where he could protect them from the dead betraying whore in his bed.

Sylar bolted from the room, speeding his way down the hall to check every other room on the floor, and then down the stairs to repeat the process. They were gone. Claire and Miranda were both missing from the home. He plopped himself down on the couch, viciously rubbing his face in an attempt to take the horror away. It had to be a bad dream. A nightmare. Elle couldn't really be there, and his girls couldn't really be gone like that. He couldn't be alone again. He just couldn't.

"Ready to listen yet?" He jumped at the sound of her voice. Elle took a seat next to him on the sofa and slapped a casual hand on his knee. "We need to have a talk, you and I."

"What did you do? Where are they? If you hurt either of them I swear I will tear you apart one piece at a time." He launched a hand at her throat and gripped with all of his might, but she only giggled in return.

"For such a smart guy you can be really dense sometimes. Maybe that's where you're little inferiority problem stems from, huh?" She tapped his forehead with an evil twinkle in her eyes. "Obviously I'm not really here since you kind of _killed_ me. And Claire and Miranda? They can't be missing if they were never here either.

"This? All of this?" she motioned about the room. "It's not real. Not a bit of it. All manufactured right there in your own brain courteousy of none other than Peter Petrelli."

"No, you're lying," he insisted, unwilling to take anything she could ever say to him for the truth.

"Built in lie detector, dumb ass. Does it tingle? Didn't think so. Besides, not even you can lie to yourself _that_ well." She smirked at him clearly taking pleasure in his pain. "You see, you just can't wrap your poor little brain around the idea that sweet, precious Claire could ever betray you. So I'm here to do it for you. I guess that makes me your subconscious," she wondered dramatically, pausing for full effect.

"Claire wouldn't do that. Not to me. She loves me," he said, trying more to reassure himself than the image of Elle next to him.

"Keep telling yourself that, Romeo. You can do it all day long for all I care because I'm not going anywhere, and we both have all the time in the world."

"We're married. We have a daughter together, and a life, and she _loves _me," he chanted to himself wishing that he could block her out.

"She loves you like you loved her when you committed mass murder in front of her, and then basically told her that your entire relationship was a diabolical scheme to screw with her head? Or maybe she loves you like you loved her when you held her hostage, or when you killed her family and friends, or maybe even when you sawed her head open to poke around in her brain. Yum, yum."

"No, those things never happened. I would never hurt her. I couldn't do those things."

"Blah, blah, blah. Are you going to cry or something because I'm getting bored over here." He looked at her like she had magically sprouted a third eye. Elle sighed, "Gabriel Gray, what have you been reduced to?

"Alright, think about it, stud. When's your anniversary?" He furrowed his brows in deep concentration searching for the information but drew a blank. "You forgot your anniversary?" she opened her eyes wide and raised her hands to her mouth in mock horror. "Don't you think the day that you say '_I do_' to eternity should be something you remember? Kind of a big commitment there, buddy.

"Oh, or how about Miranda's birthday? Any clue as to when your bouncing baby girl came along? No? Well, aren't you a sorry excuse for a domestic. How about when you moved in here? No idea as to how long you've lived in your own house either? Where have you been, Sylar? More importantly, where have you _not_ been because I'm guessing that here with your 'family' is a pretty good answer right now."

"Stop," he pleaded with her. The heart shattering information was far too much to process at one time.

"You ever wonder why there's no pictures of you in the house?"

"Enough!" he screamed at her. Much to his shame his eyes welled up with salty tears. She was trying to take everything that meant something to him away and he didn't want to let it go. He was happy there. Why couldn't he stay?

"Because it's not real," Elle answered his internal question. "What is the last _real_ thing that you can remember?"

"I remember… Kline - the night we fought… I remember talking… I was talking to Peter, I think? And then, and then Noah Bennet was there, and… I - I don't know."

"Bingo, give the boy a prize!" she slapped his knee again. "Think about it. You pushed Claire away after the very first time that she could not only admit to herself, but to _you, _that she loved you. Smooth move by the way. Good luck with the whole not being alone thing now. But you pushed her away after _that _kind of a development and then it comes as some kind of shock that the two leading men in her life just happen to show up afterward? Dear uncle Peter and Papa Bennet to the rescue. The horrible monster that hurt their little Claire Bear's feelings had to be punished. Although, I'm not so sure that killing like two hundred people in cold blood didn't have something to do with it, but all the same!"

"She didn't even know where I was…"

"But she can find you, can't she? Oh, yes, Claire Bear will always know where you are and be able to lead her chipper pals along. You know, I bet they break out into random song and dance while they're polishing their pitchforks and lighting torches."

Sylar was completely floored by the epiphany. Claire had betrayed him. Claire, and Peter, and Noah… probably all of them. They used him to do their dirty work and then stabbed him in the back. Again!

"Now you've got the idea," Elle gleefully clapped her hands. "They gave you what they knew you always wanted just so they could jerk it out from under your feet and watch you wallow in the misery of it. You might be all alone in a hundred years, but it won't matter as much if they're not around to see it, right?"

"I hate heroes," he snarled at her. Getting up and heading for the door, he took one last backward glance at the home that had given him so much joy, and then he curled his lip in despair, flinging the exit wide open to step through.

Sylar snapped his eyes open and sat up. He was in Peter's bed in his apartment, a full week having passed since he had been left there all alone. "_Petrelli_," he growled.

* * *

><p>"You said that she wanted you take everything from after the <em>carnival<em>?"

"Yes. I'm assuming that she meant the night she jumped."

"That makes sense," Peter mumbled as he swept a rogue lock of hair away from Claire's face. "She doesn't want to remember Sylar ever doing anything good. It'll make it easier for her to move on that way."

"Peter, I've taken a lot of memories - _unrecoverable_ memories in my life. But that is so much to lose. Too much." René turned solemn eyes from Claire to him. Peter could feel the subtle tension of emotion coming from the man. It was undeniably sad to see someone in so much pain that they needed to forget the love that had caused it; even if it was between his niece and Sylar of all people. _Go figure._

"Don't worry," he consoled the Haitian. "I'm pretty sure that your memory wipe wouldn't work on her. Not for long anyways. After her ability kicked in again the damage would probably just heal. She'd be pretty pissed about that."

"What do we do then? Just let her go?"

"No. Claire's too stubborn to accept that. I think I have an idea though. If we can't really take away her memories, maybe we can lock them up. At least that way she wouldn't have to deal with them until she was ready." René nodded appreciatively.

"Now, to think of a key for the lock. What's something that Sylar would do… Got it." Peter looked down on her with self-satisfaction. He wouldn't make her forget. He would make her wait until the timing was right. Placing a hand over her forehead, he pushed his thoughts into her mind.

_When Sylar shows you where his kill spot is you'll remember everything._

Just as he was finishing with Claire, Peter's phone rang. He quirked an eyebrow looking down at the caller I.D. to see Matt's number. "Matt, hey. How's Sylar?"

"The good news is that he's awake," Parkman muttered, lacking enthusiasm. He tripped around fallen chunks of concrete as he weaved his way through the gathered crowd, taking care to avoid the police streaming yellow tape everywhere.

"And the bad news?"

"By the looks of things, I'd say he's pretty pissed."

"He wrecked the place, didn't he?"

"Something like that."

Peter pinched the bridge of his in frustration. He had been afraid of an adverse reaction, but had no idea how drastic it would be. "How bad is it, Matt?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes…"

"I think maybe you should just see for yourself." Matt hung up his phone and slipped it back into his pocket as he sidled up to the edge of a smoking crater where Peter's apartment building had been standing a few hours ago.

* * *

><p>Hours had passed for Claire before she was able to make order out of the jumbled mess that was her brain. At first she had woken up at her office desk, not quite remembering where or when she was, even mentally backtracking to her college days. It felt to her as though all of her thoughts and memories had been shuffled around leaving spaces behind, but then nothing seemed to be missing.<p>

Seeing West again, aside from making her stomach flutter a bit, had been a great help in collecting herself. They had started catching up on old times as though they had never been apart, jogging her memory in the process. She was Claire Bennet, Agent 0101 of the First Response team for the D.S.R.E.C. She remembered her training and missions, her partner Chris McKinley… _What the hell ever happened to that guy_? She remembered him attacking her in the desert rambling something about thinking he might have loved her, and that he had a brother… And then she was at Kline Enterprises the night it got attacked. Did she fight him off? Did someone rescue her? Peter…? Yeah, it was probably Peter. He was always her white knight coming to save the day.

She still needed to find a way to contact the group and figure out exactly what happened that night. She knew better than to believe that her uncle or any of their comrades would suddenly turn terrorist organization over night. There had to be a logical explanation for everything.

"So, yeah. That's the twisted tale of how I ended up in New Orleans wearing nothing but my underwear," West laughed with an adorable flush of embarrassment coloring his cheeks.

"Wow," Claire giggled, her sides in stitches from laughing so hard. "So avoid any kind of drink that comes out of a blue plastic monkey head. Got it." They walked side by side quietly for a few minutes on their way to a Thai restaurant that she loved for lunch. "So, you haven't told me how you got involved with the Department yet."

"It was kind of weird," he started. "I was hanging out in Naples for a while with Sparrow doing some work for Rebel when I got a call from somebody named Whitlocke. She said that she was recruiting for the D.S.R.E.C., and that she came across my file looking for somebody to head up the new aviation team. Anyways, she also mentioned you, and that you needed a partner, and I thought, you know, why not?" The smile that he gave her accentuated by his expressive brown eyes made her pulse jump.

"There were a couple of other guys there at orientation that seemed to know you too. Some kid from Odessa that said he knew you from high school, and then another guy that I knew from Rebel that was going to do something for the aquatic team."

The conversation was cut short when a bike messenger skidded to a halt in front of them, delivering an unmarked box from an innominate sender. Her mysterious parcel had contained a slim silver cell phone that had begun to ring the moment she removed it from the box. Timidly flipping the phone open, she held it up to her ear and answered the call. "Hello?"

"Hello, Claire," a low velvety voice responded, sending a shiver of fear down her spine.

"Sylar?" West made to grab for the phone, but she held her hand out for him to stop and turned away, plugging her other ear so that she could clearly hear what her nemesis had to say.

"Were you expecting someone else?" Sylar paced over the adjacent rooftop watching the scene below play out.

"What do you want?"

_A wife, family, nice home, and security. My life back maybe. _"I want a lot of things, Claire. But that's not important right now."

She paused knowing that there was some kind of hidden subtext to decipher in his words. With every sentence he spoke there always seemed to be another one underlying it. Sylar had been dormant for so long though. It had been over a year since she had seen or heard from him. Why would he suddenly decide to start plaguing her again? Claire had to make it clear that no matter how long he stayed away she would always remember what he had done to her in the past. For all she knew he was slipping back into his twisted delusions about them "building bridges". "I'll keep trying to kill you. For the rest of my life," she hissed into the receiver.

A rumbling chuckle answered her promising threat. _Thanks for confirming my suspicions sweetheart. _"Everybody needs a hobby, Claire." The line disconnected, leaving her confused, angry, and just a little panic-stricken.

"What was that all about?" West asked anxiously.

"I don't really know," Claire mumbled flipping through screens on the phone. _He didn't block the number…_ "But I think I know what our first mission together can be." She turned an impish smile on him and some of the wariness in his eyes dissipated. West continued to scan the horizon and rooftops around them though knowing that somewhere out there they were being watched by a legendary Boogeyman. He wrapped his arm protectively around Claire and they continued on their way to lunch.

_Well, it didn't take her very long to get over you now did it? On the bright side you saved a lot of time and money by avoiding arguments over some lame knickknacks in divorce court._ Sylar shook his head to clear it of Elle's irritating voice. It was replaced by another voice that came back to him from the depths of what felt like ages ago though. "_No woman ever promises to spend forever chasing and trying to kill a man that she has no passion for." _

Sylar snapped the cell phone in his hand shut. "I love you too, Claire," he muttered to himself, breaking into a laugh with an evil glint in his eye. _I'm back…_

A raven circled overhead casting distracting shadows around his feet. "Luke?"

* * *

><p>Whitlocke stood silently at the tower window overlooking the city. She barely seemed to notice when two of her prized soldiers entered the office with a large storage locker surrounded by heavy chain in tow. The larger of the two men dropped the metal container unceremoniously in the middle of the room with a crushing thud that thundered throughout the building.<p>

"Let's see what the prize is in this cereal box," O'Keefe chimed, clearly pleased with his work. The other man nodded and punched a gleaming metallic hand through the side, gripping the jagged edge of the crude puncture, and tearing it open as though it were a typical sardine can. Sea water splashed out of the locker and spilled over the carpeted floor. Kline tumbled out, soaked to the bone and sputtering for air, sprawled out on the rug.

The general gave the ancient a moment to collect his wits before finally acknowledging other presences in the room. She turned on her heel and came to sit on the edge of the grand desk stationed in front of the window of what used to be his very own office, crossing her legs at the ankles and arms over her chest. "Hello, Lucius," she greeted with venomous distaste in her voice.

He coughed up another mouthful of salt water onto the floor before turning his face to look at her. "_You_," he simply stated, seething with fury.

"_Me_," she smiled wickedly. O'Keefe helped Kline to his feet perhaps a bit more roughly than necessary. Lucius shook him away as soon as his balance was steadied and snapped his fingers to summon flickers of flame into his palm.

Whitlocke clicked her tongue at him in disapproval extending a dark tendril of energy to restrain his arm before he could burn her officer. "That would be most unwise, Lucius. I still have plans for Mr. O'Keefe yet."

He looked back at her in disgusted disbelief. "What do you want?"

"I want a lot of things, Lucius, but above all I want peace." He snorted rudely at her. "And to get peace," she continued pretending not to notice his disrespect, "I need you. Or, more clearly, I need Kline Enterprises." The general held up a thick stack of legal documents for him to see.

"What would you want with mergers and acquisitions?"

"I'm not an idiot, Lucius. Don't attempt to play me for one," her tone grew bored. "You're going to sign over full legal ownership of Kline Enterprises and all of its subsidiaries to me, and by default, control over the D.S.R.E.C." Kline erupted into a bout of laughter at her proposal.

"What's wrong? Couldn't find someone to forge my signature so you had to dredge me up from the bottom of the ocean to sign a few papers?" He snorted and laughed again.

"Not exactly. That's just a formality." She nodded to Kyle, giving him a silent command. He grabbed Kline's face to lock their eyes together.

His pupils dilated and his voice grew deeper, almost reverberating onto itself. "Sign the documents."

Lucius quickly obeyed the order and flipped through the stack of pages signing his name and initials where prompted. After the task was complete he handed the papers back to the general and came out of the trance he had been in.

"Thank you, Lucius. Your participation in these proceedings is most appreciated. But now we have _real_ business to attend to. We're going to finish what you started, annihilating the Gray family. _Every. Last. One_." He looked up at her with dumbfounded confusion, and then stark terror. Whitlocke lashed out at him with a dark tentacle before he had the time to blink. His freshly decapitated head rolled over the soggy carpet to her feet, eyes still wide-open in fear. She knelt down to pick up the detached head and held it up to study for a moment before turning her attentions back to her startled soldiers.

"Burn the body. Spread the ashes. I'm not sure if he can grow another head or not, but I'd rather not find out."

"What are you going to do with the head?" Kyle asked, swallowing hard to hold back a gag.

"Pick a fight." Her corrupted eyes shone bright with cruel intentions.

**To be continued…**


	6. I Am The Mess You Chose

**5**

**I Am The Mess You Chose**

* * *

><p>Sylar sat quietly on a park bench across the street from a school house where children frolicked without a care in the world within the confines of the fenced in courtyard. His head rested heavily in his hands listening to their high pitched squeals of delight and peels of laughter filling the fall air. Two young boys in particular held his rapt attention. Simon and Monty Petrelli chased one another throughout the yard swinging invisible swords and yelping mock battle cries.<p>

The side of himself that could remember being their father swelled with pride at the sight. They were heroes in the making, flowing with a youthful enthusiasm that he had never known personally. It hadn't been an altogether terrible experience being a father then. Looking back on his time spent as Nathan, his visits with the boys had decidedly been the most favorable; even when Heidi had been less than thrilled about the prospect of facing her ex-husband. And Claire, the deceased Petrelli's memories were shadowed by a deep-seated regret that he had not been there to watch her grow, to have not known her until she was already nearly a capable adult. _Claire…_

He pretended not to notice the presence of another man taking a seat on the bench beside him for a moment. Instead, he continued his silent observation of the boys and internal musings about Nathan. The man had had at it all. He had a beautiful wife, bright children to adore, a wonderful home, and successful career. He had purpose. A _reason_ to live. The Petrelli clan as a whole, while admittedly dysfunctional in nature, were a group that had stuck together through the best and worst of times. At least that was how it had always seemed to him. As the long lost Petrelli son, Sylar had been allowed a small taste of what the greener pastures they lived in were like. Granted that situation left an everlasting sour flavor in his mouth, but they were all on top of the world. And he was left… alone. Always alone. And mostly because of them.

"_My_ day just went to hell. There must be a Petrelli nearby," he finally spoke, his words dripping with acidity.

Peter leaned forward on the bench mimicking Sylar's position and watched his nephews with the same pride in his eyes that Sylar had felt only a moment before. Fleeting thoughts about his dearly departed brother telepathically crossed between them before momentarily shifting to a certain blonde. Peter snapped his mind back into order when he felt himself mentally drifting and turned to look at Sylar remorsefully.

"I know you're hurting right now." He certainly did know that. His empathic personality could have picked up on the emotional distress rolling off of the dark man from a mile away without ever bringing an ability into play. "And that's my fault." Sylar looked back at him, his eyes telling a thousand stories without permission. "You have to know that I thought I was doing a good thing at the time. I wouldn't intentionally put you through this, hurt you like that."

The lie detection power was noticeably inactive. He took a deep breath and sighed. "But you did."

"Look, Sy, if I knew… If I knew that this would happen I never would have done it."

"You said yourself that you know me better than anyone, Peter. And you gave me everything I ever could have wanted. _Almost_. " He let out a disturbed chuckle. "What did you expect? What did you think would happen when I found out that it wasn't real? That it was all some sick hoax. Or did you even intend to wake me up at all? Maybe you were just going to leave me there to rot."

"Sy," Peter drooped a little, unsure of what to say, "it wasn't like that."

"I can understand why Claire might want me to suffer. And Noah, that guy would love nothing more than to have my head served to him on a platter. But you? Et tu, Brute?"

"Damn it, Sylar, listen to me!" Peter's temper unexpectedly flared. "We had to -" his words were cut off by Sylar's fingers snapping together and sealing his mouth shut. He grunted with disdain but accepted defeat for the moment. Starting a fight with the disturbed man next to him with so many people and children around would never be a bright idea.

Peter started screaming at him with his thoughts trying to explain himself knowing that Sylar would hear them, but the other man's attentions were diverted. It took a minute for him to realize that his dark accomplice was carefully watching a raven that had landed a few feet away, stopping to stare at them with beady little eyes of accusation. The invisible grasp on his mouth released as Sylar slowly lifted himself from the bench and took a step toward the bird with his hands stretching out as though he were thinking about how to catch it.

"What are you _doing_?" The raven was startled by the sound of his voice and cawed loudly, flapping its wings for take off. Sylar clutched his hands to telekinetically capture the bird, but only succeeded in gripping a few tail feathers.

"Damn," he muttered. Before Peter could figure out what had happened Sylar took to the skies in chase.

"Sylar!" Peter shouted after him as they both zipped through the city behind the raven. "Sylar!" he screamed again into the winds whipping against his face to no avail. After nearly fifteen minutes of dipping and dodging between buildings the reformed killer came to a sudden stop on the roof of a grand hotel. Peter landed shortly after him, raking his fingers through tangled hair in frustration. "I wasn't done talking to you!"

He wasn't listening. The raven was perched on the end of a flag pole protruding from the masonry. A light breeze ruffled the avian pest's black feathers as it watched Sylar cautiously approach again. "Here Luke, Luke, Luke…" He slowly pulled himself over the lip of the roof onto the slight ledge and took a few tender steps onto the metal rod, wavering briefly to maintain his balance. "Here, Luke… Here little brother…" The bird flapped its wings anxiously, but didn't budge from its precarious position, cawing noisily at the half-crazed man ready to spring forward any second.

"Sylar!" Peter yelled again, losing his patience with the shenanigans of his unbalanced comrade. The raven began to flutter away for the second time but Sylar lunged forward to take the bird into his hands. A smile of triumph hovered over his face for a moment before he lost his balance on the end of the flag pole and automatically released his prize in a fit of natural reaction. Survival instinct temporarily shut down his higher thought processes that would have connected him to one of his many abilities that could remedy the situation and he flailed out to grab onto the pole before he plummeted to the ground below. With a lingering squawk the bird was soon just a dark spot in the skies over the city.

Sylar ripped a deep growl from his throat as he recalled his power of flight and returned his feet to the stability of the rooftop. "You want my attention so bad, Petrelli? Well now you've got it!" He pulled Peter in close with his telekinesis and ignored the gurgles of choking while he glared the shorter man directly in the eyes. "What do you want from me?" he demanded more than asked.

Peter squirmed in the invisible hands binding him, kicking his feet which floated a few inches from the ground and sent the toe of his shoe on a collision course with Sylar's shin. He grunted with the stinging impact and let go.

"I _wanted_ to finish explaining myself," Peter mumbled while he dragged a ragged breath into his lungs. His temper quickly deflated. "I wanted you to tell me that you understand, and that you forgive me. And I wanted you to come with me and Emma when we leave tonight. We're meeting up with Mom in Paris, and we -"

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Sy, the Department is drooling over the idea of taking you out. They've got your picture up everywhere!"

"I _said _that I'm not going _anywhere_!" he insisted obstinately.

"Damn it, Gabriel," Peter slipped his given name to support his serious tone causing Sylar's nostrils to flare indignantly. "You're coming with us if I have to drag you kicking and screaming! This is not the time to be a stubborn jackass! They're going to hunt you. They're going to find you. And they're going to _destroy_ you." He finished his point with a finger jammed into the other man's chest emphasizing every word.

"Let them come."

"No! You're not God, and you're not going to be able to fight them off forever."

"I won't need to last forever. Just long enough to -"

"Don't you _dare_ even think about that," Peter warned, jabbing him with a finger again.

"He's right you know. You really shouldn't think that way. It's not healthy." He looked behind himself to see Elle standing there smirking at him.

"What are you doing here?"

"Sylar, I just told you -"

"Not you," Sylar sneered, turning back to clamp Peter's mouth shut again.

"I'm a part of you, Gabriel. Everywhere you go, I go." Elle came up to him, sliding her hands over his shoulders and resting her face against his arm. "I'm here to protect you. I'll make sure that you're never hurt or alone again."

"I don't need you," he hissed, shrugging her off. Peter's eyes widened as he watched Sylar argue with someone that didn't seem to exist.

"Oh, but you do, Pookie-bear. You're so confused right now. You don't know who to trust or believe, and I can help you with that," she smiled and grabbed his hand, encasing it in hers. "You can trust _me_."

"You helped turn me into a monster!" he viciously accused, jerking his hand away from her.

"Yes, I did. And I would do it again today, and tomorrow, and the next day after that because it made you _better_." He furrowed his brow in frustrated confusion. "Remember what you were before, Gabriel? Do you remember that sad, sad little man who was scared of the world around him, and terrified of being rejected by the people in it? You told yourself that you just enjoyed your work while you were spending all those hours tucked away with your watches, but you were hiding. Even when you knew that you were meant to do greater things, you stayed in the shadows watching the world go by around you because you couldn't live with yourself if you failed.

"I cured you of that. I'm what made it possible for you realize all of those dreams about 'reinventing' yourself and starting over. And now look at you. You can be anyone you want, _do_ anything you want. You can be rich and famous, the most powerful man in the world." Elle stood in front of him and leaned in to rest the side of her face against his chest. "I made you stronger, and faster, and better. I'm not going to apologize for that.

"We can be together forever, Gabriel. I'll always be there for you, and accept you for what you really are. Isn't that what you've wanted all this time?"

He grimaced with self-disgust because he couldn't make himself push her away. Peter muttered something unintelligibly, his mouth still being muffled by Sylar's power. Elle turned to look at him with a cruel twinkle in her eye and moved back into her secured position at Sylar's side. "But we can't have that. Not really."

"Why?" he demanded with a little more distress in his voice than he wanted to admit.

"Because we have to get rid of the things that make you weak first. We have to take care of the people who use you and manipulate you. People like Peter who say they're your friend, and then violate your trust. And your mind for _that_ matter. People like Claire..."

"Claire…"

"She said she loved you, but there she is, already in the arms of another guy. You saw it yourself."

"I pushed her away though. I made her want to leave me. I can't really blame her for wanting someone around. It's not like I played the part of a pious monk the whole time she hated me before."

"What kind of a person claims to love someone just to forget about them a week later though? Of course, she is a _Petrelli_. They're all schemers aren't they? They lie to you and abuse you because they know how much you need to be loved. And the second they're done with you, you get discarded like yesterday's bad news."

"What are you saying?" He grabbed her wrists and forced her to look at him in a way that probably would have hurt her had she not existed solely in his head.

"Maybe the whole thing was a just one more lie."

Sylar let her go and spent a few moments in wistful contemplation. Regretfully, everything she said made an odd amount of sense in the paranoid workings of his twisted mind. "What do I need to do?"

"Destroy that one," she stated simply, turning to point at Peter, still helplessly bound. "Shake off your weaknesses."

"Sylar, talk to me. Tell me what's going on with you." Peter was released from his holdings painfully aware that something was very wrong with his friend. He could hear Elle's name being repeated mindlessly over layers of jumbled, nonsensical thoughts, and feel strange emotions enveloping him caught somewhere between pain and fierce anger. "Sylar?" he hesitantly approached when the other man briefly became catatonic. And then Elle was gone.

He was wracked with a full body shudder, imagining Peter being torn to pieces by his own blood-stained hands. Sylar reacted without thinking when he felt a hand on his shoulder roughly shaking him. Peter sailed through the air and rolled head over heel across the roof before being lifted by his throat over the edge. He struggled to pierce through the force controlling his movements with his own powers, but even after being fully restored by the dark haired lunatic, Sylar was stronger, unhindered by moral and emotional compromise.

_Are we back to this? Are you going to try to kill me now?_

Sylar shuddered again, shaking his head and snapping back to reality. "No. No, I'm not going to destroy Peter Petrelli." He sighed with little relief. Sylar turned a harsh sneer on him, his eyes growing dark and cold. "I'm going to watch you destroy yourself," he laughed without humor. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a bird to catch." He started to walk away tossing a, "Don't follow me," over his shoulder and took to the skies again.

Peter stumbled forward from the edge of the roof and ran his fingers through his hair, shoulders slumping with stress. Dealing with an angry Sylar was one thing, but a broken one… _What the hell happened to him in that dream to send him off the deep end like that?_ He was pulled away from his thoughts by the insistent trilling of the cell phone in his pocket.

* * *

><p>"Tragedy continues to follow last week's events surrounding Kline Enterprises. As you may recall over two hundred lives were lost during the terrorist attack by the 'Resistance'. Early this morning investigators were called to a grisly scene just outside of the D.S.R.E.C. campus where a shocking and barbaric display was found.<p>

"Lucius Kline, President of Kline Enterprises had been missing since the attack. While many had hoped he was still alive and had merely managed to escape the hostilities, the search was called off today after…" the news anchor shifted uncomfortably in her seat and coughed to suppress a gag. "Sorry. The search was called off after Mr. Kline's severed head was found mounted on a pole just outside of the Department's campus.

"We've been told that," the anchorwoman squirmed involuntarily again, "that the name _Sylar _was brutally etched into the forehead of the remains. Sylar is widely believed to be the pseudonym of one Gabriel Gray of Queens, New York. Gray is the suspected leader of the 'Resistance' movement of 'enhanced' persons." Sylar's infamous mug shot flashed over the screen. "He is currently wanted for the murder of Virginia Gray, and is also the prime suspect in numerous other homicide cases.

"When asked about the connection between Kline and the D.S.R.E.C., Department officials responded by informing us that Kline Enterprises as well as the deceased personally, quite generously offered a large portion of the Department's funding. He was an adamant believer in the good work being done for the 'enhanced' community, and worked closely with Department officials to ensure that all of their technological and research needs were met while maintaining a safe and humane environment for 'special' persons." The woman was handed a sheet of paper from just off camera and her tense features noticeably relaxed with relief.

"We're going to a live conference being held at the Department where officials are making a public statement about the 'Resistance' movement, and the recovery of Mr. Kline's remains." After a brief pause the screen readjusted to show a man in a tailored suit stepping up to a podium decorated with dozens of microphones, and a ticker tape at the bottom boasted of _Breaking News_.

"As you have all undoubtedly heard by now, the terrorist organization calling themselves the 'Resistance' has struck again. The decapitated head of Lucius Kline was found mounted to a stake just outside of Department headquarters. This move was… a grotesquely bold statement on their part. We are viewing the action as an open challenge and are taking it quite seriously. All of the Department's resources will be put to use to catch these lawless renegades and bring them to justice for their crimes."

"With Mr. Kline now deceased, what does this mean for funding and relations between the Department and Kline Enterprises?"

"It seems that Mr. Kline had already received several threatening messages prior to the attack last week and made preparations in advance in case of his untimely demise. Control over Kline Enterprises was handed over to Mrs. Whitlocke who has already assured us that this tragedy will not deter their dedication to working with the Department. Funding and research will continue."

"What does this mean for the 'enhanced' community in general?" The spokesman tensed, already tiring of the journalists' questions.

"We have not yet made any clear decisions about that, but rest assured that we _will_ find a way to root out these terrorists and maintain the rights and civil liberties of all."

Tracey Strauss hurled her partially emptied glass of scotch at the television before picking up her phone. All around the world their group had tuned into the transmission. They may have vowed to retain silence amongst one another until the storm blew over, but she knew that it wasn't going to happen so easily. She rang Noah and Lauren, who in turn called Matt, who called Mohinder, and so on until everyone was pensively hunched over the communication devices in a singular conference.

"Translation: we're screwed," she growled into the receiver.

"Tracey, now is not the time to get antsy. We're going to follow the plan and stay hidden. Everything will work out," Noah reassured them even though Lauren rubbed the insincerity out of his shoulders behind him.

"Does anyone else remember being chained and drugged onto a plane the last time the government wanted to _protect our rights _when we were deemed dangerous to society?"

"Why would Sylar put Kline's head on a stick and dump in front of the Department like that? I know he's pissed right now, but what the hell was the point of poking the beast like that?"

"I don't want to believe that he would do that, Matt. He knows how much trouble we've already gone through for this."

"I have to agree with the doc on that," Edgar piped up, bending over the bar to grab himself another beer.

"I don't believe that he's responsible for this particular mess either. I had a dream last night," Angela sucked in a hiss of air when her tailor accidentally pricked her with a pin while fitting her new suit jacket.

"Of?"

"It was… vague. Fuzzy. But I saw Sylar and Claire. She was attacking him -"

"Because that's so unusual," Matt snorted.

"Shh, I want to hear this."

"Sorry."

"It was Claire, but it wasn't. There was something wrong with her. And then…"

"And then what? Come on, Angela!"

"There was an explosion. A terrible explosion that destroyed everything leaving a desert of glass."

"So, what? We have to worry about another Kirby Plaza happening?"

"I - I don't really know. Some decisions haven't been made yet. The future isn't clear. But I do know that Sylar wasn't evil in my dream."

"Wait, we went from a pissed off Sylar to an evil one? Is him going all headhunter on us again a serious concern?"

"Probably."

"Noah, would it really kill you to show the guy some faith?"

"I have more than you think."

"So… What do we do about him then?"

"Hasn't that been the question for the last five years?"

"You know what I mean."

Voices started mingling together in a cacophony of meaningless noise proposing various ideas for solving their issues. Peter released his phone to float in front of him while he rubbed his eyes against the fading sunlight that wasn't helping his headache. "Alright… Enough," he muttered trying to break through the aimless think tank. "Everybody shut up!" he finally shouted to reward himself with the group members' silence. "Thank you. First, I think we should just decide whether we're going to do anything at all with him before we jump to making plans."

"What do you mean 'whether we're going to do anything at all'? We have to do _something_, don't we?"

"Not really."

"Oh."

"What about the innocent lives that could be lost if he does indeed go on another killing spree?"

"How many lives would be lost if we tried take him on again? The fact is, assuming that we can even catch him at all if he decides that he doesn't want to do what we want him to, there's no place to hold him. There's isn't a prison on the planet that can hold him, no drugs that can keep him under, and no dreams that can put him down. He always finds a way out. We don't exactly have the best track record when it comes to collateral damage."

"We can always kill him."

"I'm going to pretend that I didn't hear you seriously say that, Matt."

"What? It's not like he doesn't come back!" Several rounds of groans could be heard echoing through the lines.

"Let's take a vote. Personally, I think he's been through enough for a while. We know we can trust him to do the right thing in the long run. Mom already said that he wasn't evil in her dream. Just… I think we should just let him go, give him some space. Let him take some time to get his head right and do what he needs to.

"For pretty obvious reasons I also feel comfortable voting for Emma. I know she would want the same thing."

"Aye, I say let him go too," Edgar said with a grin for the mouth of his bottle.

Mohinder drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk for a few moments thinking about the pros and cons of such a decision before finally settling on the side where he felt most comfortable. "Let him go."

Choruses of "Let him go", were heard from Angela and Tracey while Matt observed his wife and son relaxing in the next room. What he was about to say would certainly affect them as well, but he had to choose the high ground that would leave him with a clear conscience so that he could sleep at night. "Let him go," he sighed hoping that he wouldn't regret those three words later in time.

"Um, I think I'm just going to abstain from this one. The whole Sylar issue really isn't as personal to me as it is to everyone else." Noah patted Lauren's hand knowing that it was his turn to voice his opinion on the matter.

"Let him go."

He could almost see the shocked expressions on all of their faces as several gasps were heard. No one had ever expected him to agree with such a passive measure so easily, let alone voluntarily. _This old dog still has a few surprises in him._

"Then it's unanimous. We let Sylar walk."

"While we're on the subject… How's Claire? Have you seen her?"

"She's - She's good, Noah. She decided to move on."

"That's my girl," Noah said with a smile tinged by sadness.

"Yeah. I think she's happy."

* * *

><p>Claire sat on the floor of her office with her lap top balanced between her knees and papers strewn haphazardly in a semicircle around her. She had spent hours that afternoon terrorizing the records department looking for anything related to Sylar in vain. She absolutely refused to believe that an institution like the renowned D.S.R.E.C. would lack intelligence on such a vital target so she had decided to start her own file on the villain. Disappointment and irritation quickly ran abound though when she found herself unable to complete the most basic information.<p>

_Name: Gray, Gabriel. _No middle name. _Date of birth: unknown. Age: 30ish? Place of birth: New York. _No specifics. _Current Residence: unknown. Abilities: Intuitive Aptitude, Telekinesis, Electric Manipulation, Rapid Cellular Regeneration, _shiver, _Lie Detection, Shape Shifting, Flight, _grimace. Her list felt so incomplete, but he had never really had to use much against her, and she had been left out of the fight between him, Peter, and Nathan. She winced again. _Come on, Claire. You're an agent now. It's time to put those bad memories to some use and get this guy._

_Relative information: abandoned by parents who didn't want him, adopted by a mother who didn't understand him, father was a cold-blooded killer…_ Claire had to stop and shake away the image in her head of Sylar standing in front of a chalk board applying swishing check marks for every reason they were alike. Wasn't it bad enough that she had to remember him at all with everything that he done to her? Why did he have to live in her head that way, making appearances at random whenever a memory was sparked of… something….

"Do you ever get the feeling that you've forgotten to remember something?"

West leaned back in her chair with his feet floating in the air while he bounced a rubber ball back and forth between himself and the wall. "Not really," he chuckled. "You've been straining your brain too hard. Let's take a break. Go do something fun."

_McKinley, Chris, Agent 0105 of the D.S.R.E.C. Law Enforcement division declared K.I.A. Last seen responding to a call about a civil disturbance via an unknown speedster. McKinley's body was recovered from a shallow grave near city limits along with six other victims - all deemed to have had "special" abilities. The bodies were conspicuously missing the top halves of their skulls._

"That - that can't be right." West looked over at her in question, studying the concern and horror on her face. "McKinley… my partner before you. This report says that he was killed over three weeks ago, but I just saw him last week…"

He climbed out of the chair to kneel next to her looking over the documents in her hand. "These reports were falsified. But why? What would they want to cover up about this?" She passed him a crime scene photo taken of the grave of bodies and ignored his dry heave of disgust. "This is clearly Sylar's work. That's how he takes powers, by cutting the head open and learning how their brain works."

"Okay, that's it. We're taking a break, and you're going to stop looking at incredibly gross pictures for a while."

"West, I can't. This is proof that Sylar has been acquiring new powers in New York recently… It might sound stupid, but… it's like I can _feel_ him out there. He's still in the city, and I have to find him before he can hurt anyone else."

"That's not stupid, Claire." She was completely pulled in by the soft understanding within the brown depths of his eyes. "He hurt you and people you loved, and now you feel like you have to prevent that from ever happening to anyone else. I get it."

"Thank you."

He leaned in to kiss the top of her head making her smile shyly. "But in all seriousness, it'll be hard to lead your little crusade if you don't get something to eat. The Boogeyman will still be waiting when we get back, I promise."

* * *

><p>"So, I am…"<p>

"Dead, yes."

"And he is…" Hiro's eyes flickered over to Ando leaning against his desk with his arms crossed and head bowed in deep concentration.

"Also dead, yes."

"And you are my… And Claire is…"

"Yes," Miranda nodded with a tight-lipped frown. She had spent the last four hours recalling the events of the future for the Japanese duo, answering their questions, and doing her best to explain how and why things were. They were taking the grim news surprisingly well considering what it all meant as to how they would be living their lives from that point onward.

"Great Scott," he mumbled, slapping himself in the forehead.

"How many soldiers were pulled through?" Ando asked, rousing from his stupor.

"Three Sentinels and four Rangers."

"And they're all here?" he inquired, pointing a finger towards the floor indicating their current place in time.

"As far as I can tell. They would have been given directives to hunt down key members of the Resistance and eliminate them, but Sylar would be the primary target."

"I can't believe I'm saying this, but… I think we have to protect the Brain Man." Hiro shuddered at the thought.

"Matt Parkman will also be a high priority mark, as will Peter Petrelli. Something may have to be done about Mohinder Suresh. The information he holds will be invaluable to _her_. If it gets out then we've already lost the battle before it starts. She won't be repeating the same mistakes this time around."

"Well, let's go then. Let's find them and save the world, again!"

"Finding them is going to be difficult to say the least," Miranda sighed, running distressed fingers through her shaggy hair and sadly watching the enthusiastic grin fade from Ando's face. "They were specifically trained to avoid people like us and Sylar. They never touch anything with their bare skin, they never make a decision that will affect the future until they're ready to strike, and their thoughts and emotions are always in check among other things. She also likes to select those with low level abilities since that inherently makes them harder to sense and keep track of."

Miranda's eyes suddenly clouded over with a milky white pigment. "Duck." Hiro and Ando both exchanged looks of confusion before the window behind Hiro's desk shattered. He blinked nearly a second to late, opening his eyes to see glass splinters frozen in the air while time was stopped. "I said duck."

Miranda and Hiro both observed the black armored figure that had lunged for Ando through the window. A serrated combat knife was held in the assassin's hand and poised to strike a mortal blow, the very tip piercing the man's skin so that a single drop of blood appeared. "Close one," Hiro whispered to himself.

"Level two, Muscle Mimic class. I _hate_ these guys."

"What do we do with him?"

"Interrogate him. Kill him. Something poetic." Hiro rolled his eyes at her from the corners with a frightfully stern frown. "Don't look at me like that." He cleared his throat and continued to stare at her until she shifted uncomfortably. "Fine. We can drag him back to the future where he belongs. That should be good enough for now."

"Don't worry little butterfly. Everything will be alright," Hiro told her with a quick smile and a reassuring pat on her shoulder.

* * *

><p>"Em?" Peter called upon entering their hotel room. "Emma?" he called again before mentally slapping himself for the mundane action. A note had been left on the table to tell him that she had gone out for something to eat and would be back soon so he repressed the urge to worry about her being alone and headed for the shower. He had just turned the water on when a muffled whining sound caught his attention.<p>

Peter followed the noise back into the bedroom area and stopped short. A young woman was sitting on the edge of the bed with her hands taped together in front of her, and a silver strip covering her mouth. Silent tears flowed down her cheeks when he moved to read the tag under the bright red bow around her neck.

_Happy hunting - Sylar._

A throaty sound of disgust escaped him while he worked to free the girl from her bindings. Once her hands were released, Peter suddenly felt short of breath. The girl before him was different somehow, _special_, and that knowledge awakened a most unwelcome need. He was _hungry_.

The _hunger_ of intuitive aptitude reared its ugly head, raking sharp talons of irresistible need over his spine, and crawling into the pit of his gut to give him a healthy squeeze. He had to quench the pain of starvation. He needed to feed… had to. He just wanted to understand.

"Run," he commanded her while his rapidly waning resolve remained. "Run! Get out! Get away from me!" he shouted at her, unwittingly flailing his hands at his sides and causing the bed beneath her to rock uncontrollably. She shrieked in stark terror and bolted for the door.

_I'm going to watch you destroy yourself._ "Son-of-a-" Peter faltered, clutching wildly at himself trying to will away the dark urge painting his vision in blood red. "I just need… to know… how it works…" He couldn't breathe, couldn't focus on anything but the retreating form behind him. The girl was screaming and sobbing pleas for someone to help her, banging her fists against the door that he hadn't realized he had sealed shut to prevent her escape.

"Stop," he growled viciously. "Stop - stop crying." Peter wasn't sure anymore if he was making the demands of himself or the girl, but her body had tacked itself to the wall, and a low buzzing of sweet relief began to fill his ears.

* * *

><p>"Are you sure you don't want me to wait and take you home?"<p>

"No, its alright. I just need to do this one thing real quick." West sighed at her, crossing his arms and giving her a knowing look.

"Promise me that you're not going to stay up all night working this case, and you actually _will_ go home when you're done."

"West, I -"

"_Promise_," he insisted, unrelenting in his gaze.

"I just have one thing to do and then I'm calling it a night," she relented with a sweeping smile.

"Okay then." He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek that fluttered in her stomach and bade her good night.

Claire fumbled with the key to her office for a moment before stepping inside and flipping the light on. The stack of papers that she had collected for herself on Sylar littered her desk, quietly calling her to continue the search despite what she had said previously. She made quick work of securing a large world map to the wall behind her desk and began sticking push pins into the paper to indicate where the psychopath's known victims had been murdered.

Minutes later a thought drifted to the surface of her mind and she retrieved the silver cell phone that he had had delivered to her from the top drawer of her desk. Sylar hadn't blocked the number that he had called her from and she had intended to attempt to use it to get a lock on his position, but another fleeting thought came.

Her fingers trembled over the tiny buttons as she typed in a short message, curious as to whether the designated number was still active, and if he would answer if it were. Claire hesitated for a long second before punching the send button that would communicate her text message, _Where are you?_

There was barely a pause between the display signaling that the text had been sent and the answering ring. _Behind you._ Fear tightened a knot in her throat and she had to work to swallow around it. Her heart was thundering in her chest, threatening to beat hard enough to break through when she turned around. A barely noticeable disturbance in the overhead light's refraction announced the approach of a camouflaged form and Sylar suddenly materialized before her.

"Hello, Claire."

"What do you want?"

He smirked at her briefly, taking the phone from her hand and gently placing it on her desk next to the piles of paper documenting him. "That's the existential question isn't it? I've been spending a lot of time thinking about exactly that lately." Sylar took a step towards her to which she automatically reacted by backing away. "I was always curious why you were so fascinated by the idea of living a normal life when you're anything but." He took another step and she moved backwards again.

"You scream and cry about how all you really want is to live like a normal person, and yet," he paused, rolling his eyes around the room, "here you are acting the part of a Company girl out to save the world." Another step forward and he had her back bumping against the wall. "You want all the things that everyone else does, home, family, someone to love you for who you really are, but somewhere deep down that wasn't enough."

"Sy -"

"Shh. I wasn't done talking yet," he whispered in a dangerously low tone while his fingers hovered over her lips to beg silence. "You wanted all of that, but you also wanted to be _special_. And you wanted other people to know how special you are too because you're a greedy little thing like that." He placed his hands against the wall on either side of her so that she was effectively trapped next to him. "So you jumped off of a Ferris wheel on live television to show the world just how," he took a deep breath of the scent in her hair, exhaling slowly with a sadistic grin on his face, "_extraordinary_ you can be.

"You want the home, and the family, and the white picket fence, but you want power too. Do you want to add the next check mark to our list of ways we're alike, or is that a pleasure that I still own?"

Claire surprised him with a bubble of giggles. "Sylar wants a white picket fence? All the better to hang your victims from?" He slammed his hands against the wall to interrupt her mocking snorts of laughter.

"I can remember what it was like to be Parkman. To know what it felt like to have a wife that loves him and a child…" he looked away with a strange look of longing in his eyes that made her curious about what he was thinking. "I can still remember what it was to be a Petrelli too. I had a place where I belonged, even if it was all a lie."

She didn't know if he was referring to being forced into impersonating her father, or his brief stint as her uncle, but all either notion provoked was her fury. "Get to the point, Sylar. I don't plan on wasting my eternity listening to you ramble." His answering smirk served to infuriate her even more.

"I think I finally understand. You're idea of a normal life is really, in essence, having it all." Claire swallowed hard again when he leaned in, fearful that he was about to try kissing her again when his face loomed less than an inch from hers, their noses lightly grazing. "Something that I'll never have," he whispered.

Sylar's fingers traced the contours of her cheek sending a shiver through her. The simple touch brought images to him of the tears that had haunted the smooth skin there during the sleepless nights of tossing and turning in despair. She hadn't betrayed him at all as he had thought. "You forgot about me."

Claire had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but there was something wrong about the way her flesh reacted to his touch, blood rushing to flush the surface and nerves coming alive to take in the full scope of the killer's caresses. She could _feel_ it.

She caught the pained expression written all over his face and coloring his hypnotic eyes just before she realized that she had been leaning into his hand, moving purposefully unaware into his palm as the hand cupped her jaw. "I hope you find everything you want, Claire," he whispered with a disturbing amount of sincerity while his lips barely ghosted over hers with each word, never truly making contact but working in close enough proximity to churn the adrenaline induced swelling in her stomach. But then she made the mistake of blinking and he was gone into the thin air that he had come from.

"What the hell was that?" she asked herself, shaking her head to clear the fuzz of muddled thoughts about Sylar and his magic way of making her feel, and maybe even _want_, his touch. There was that unsettling tug in the back of her brain again that she had somehow missed something important, forgotten to remember something…

_West is right. I am straining myself too much. _Claire rubbed at her eyes in fatigue deciding to call it a night, and she reached over her desk to tear away another page of her calendar. October had arrived, and soon thereafter November, and December, and so on until a full year had passed around them all.

**To be continued...**


	7. How to Attract A Psycho

**6**

**How to Attract A Psycho**

* * *

><p><em>December, 2012<em>

A rapping of knuckles on the glass of her cell alerted Claire to her visitor. She rolled into a sitting position from her bed to see her former teammate grinning at her. "Hello, Claire. How are the accommodations? They treating you alright down here?"

"What do you want, Kyle?" she hissed at him, not bothering to sweep the lifeless locks of dark brown hair away from their drooping positions over her face.

His expression turned from one of delight at seeing her to deadly seriousness, pressing his palms to the window and leaning in to rest his forehead on the cool surface. "Just because of…" he sighed heavily, his breath fogging the glass, "how things turned out doesn't mean that I don't care about what happens to you." He swept his gaze slowly over the bruises on her arms and the cuts covering her hands. "You would let me know if you needed anything? If there was something that I could do?"

"I've got a pretty good idea of what you could do with yourself," she spat, trying to bring herself to a standing position to face him but the weakness in her limbs hindered the action. He jumped, ready to enter the cell despite regulations and orders from the higher ups when she swayed dangerously close to toppling over. Claire regained her balance though, shooting him a glare that should have had the power to melt his boots to the tiled floor.

"Claire, don't be like that," he whined, returning his hands to the glass. "You know how I feel about you."

"I do tend to attract the psychos." O'Keefe's lips pulled into a vicious sneer and she expected a growl to rip from his throat to match the action. But instead his sneer morphed into a slow disturbing smile, his fingers tapping lightly on the window.

"You never stop fighting do you?" he chuckled to himself. "You're so strong, Claire. So fierce. So… beautiful. Especially when you're pissed. I always loved that about you." The heat in her face evaporated, but the flush remained, an unfortunate byproduct of her fever spikes that they had little luck in soothing. Her cell had to be air conditioned constantly to the point that it felt like she was sleeping in a refrigerator. "I brought you a present," he said trilling his voice like he expected her to jump for joy at the prospect.

Kyle moved out of her available view so she sat back down on the corner of her bed with a pained huff that she hoped he hadn't heard. A moment later he returned to the window with a guard in tow that she recognized as being one of the ones that had escorted her into her cell. "Is this the guy that hit you?" he asked with a tinge of menace in his eyes. When she looked away and refused to answer his question he turned on the guard. "Are you the one that hit her? Were you the one stupid enough to strike a superior officer?"

The nameless guard, whom had obviously been compelled by the blank expression on his face nodded in the affirmative. Kyle forced the man to make eye contact with him. His pupils dilated and his voice produced a low echo in itself. "Put your gun in your mouth," he commanded without blinking. The guard obediently produced his side arm and put the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth, clamping his lips down around it so that his cheeks bulged slightly.

"Should I make him shoot himself, Claire? Punish him for what he did to you?" She hated the part of herself that wanted to tell him to pull the trigger. Maybe she belonged in there. A monster's cage for the monster she had felt herself turning into. The worst part was knowing that she had no one to blame but herself.

"Is there a problem here?"

Claire had never imagined that she would feel relief hearing the voice of her doctor. She came within the viewing area of the cell's window in her spotless white lab coat like it was shining armor and she was there to save the day.

"No. No problems here… unless Claire thinks there is?" Kyle and the doctor both looked in at her, and she declined to meet their eyes or answer.

"I think you need to leave, Agent O'Keefe," the doctor commented with a steely edge to her tone. She had undoubtedly perceived the hostile tensions between them. "You're disturbing my patient, and she needs her rest."

"Of course, ma'am," he relented looking back to Claire. "Anything to help her recuperate." He continued to linger there however, watching the doctor carefully enter the access codes to her cell. She dreaded the thought of what he would use that information for. When the doctor was ready to enter the space she paused to glance back at him and he nodded curtly with a sly smile before vacating the premises with the guard.

* * *

><p><em>September, 2012<em>

"Unit one, check."

"Unit six, check."

"Unit seven, check."

"Unit eight, good to go."

"Air to ground, you ready for us down there?"

"All set."

Claire looked back over her shoulder to see West giving their teammates one last security check of their parachutes before she popped the hatch. She had to grip the edges of the plane's frame to steady herself in the wind, the vacuum effect threatening to suck her out. "Claire, wait!" West called to her over the coms. A sea of green slipped by beneath, the isle destination densely packed with jungle flora. She didn't stop to wait for the others, hurling herself out of the transport plane into the abyss between sky and water.

"Claire!" she heard him shout at her again inside of the helmet while she spun through the air, streamlining her body into a gravity propelled rocket. The others dove out of the passing aircraft behind her linked by hand to maintain proximity until they met the zero-point where they would need to deploy their chutes. She would never come out and say that free falls like that were one of her favorite parts of the job but her partner knew. There was something about the potent mixture of hormonal reactions and the pang of dangerous uncertainty that gave her a rush like no other feeling in the world. It was something she could _feel_.

"Show offs," Alex laughed from the edge of the beach.

"She's going to miss the target."

"Damn it, Claire, pull the cord already and stop screwing around."

"Yup, she's going to miss it."

"Shut up, Kyle. Claire! Pull the cord!"

"Alex, be ready to pick up the pieces. She's headed into the reef."

"Retrieval. _Great_. On the way."

She wasn't listening to a word they were saying. The team had already released their chutes, maneuvering in steady controlled circles down to their marked landing area while she had passed far beyond the point where a slowed descent would help to break much of the force of the impending impact. West had needed to stay behind to guide the rest, but as soon as they were secure he went darting after her at top speed. It wasn't going to be fast enough.

Claire slammed into the surface of the water, more like a slab of concrete from the height she had fallen from, with only a few feet to spare from the jagged, bony serrations of coral. Her body was dealt a devastating blow by the crushing forces that would have instantly killed anyone else. Unconscious, she drifted into the depths of the swirling currents that washed her against the reef and released tendrils of her blood. West hovered over the reef watching the waves crash over the living structure with thin hues of crimson coloring the crests while he signaled Alex to where she had gone under.

She opened her eyes and floundered for a moment, her protective suit caught in the snags of coral, before being grabbed into Alex's arms. Propriety was lost when he ripped her helmet off and brought their mouths together to share a breath with her, lips lingering perhaps a few seconds too long. Claire held on tight around his neck as he swam them back to the shoreline, enjoying the beauty of the sunlight flashing over the crystal blue surface of the waters above them and the insistent tug of the undertow. They arrived on the beach and stumbled into the sands, coarse grains sticking to them wherever they made contact. Her savior rolled her onto her back and pressed their mouths together again in an effort to push more oxygen into her lungs. She started coughing up spurts of water and Alex patted her on the back laughing only a little at her predicament.

"Claire!" West landed at her side and tore of his helmet to glare at her. "When I tell you pull the cord, you pull the God damn cord!"

"West, chill man," Alex piped up to defend her. "She's not hurt. We're still ahead of schedule. No harm done."

"No harm done?" he snorted and rolled his eyes contemptuously. "Maybe not _this_ time, but what about the next, huh? One of these days you're going to push it too far, Claire! One of these days you're regeneration isn't going to save you, and we won't be able to put you back together again."

She had to bite her bottom lip to avoid giggling when her imagination conjured up a likeness between herself and Humpty Dumpty. He was absolutely seething with anger at her, his eyes burning into hers and summoning a shred a guilt. "You might be the team leader, but I'm the head of aviation, and when I give you an order, you follow it," he growled, jabbing his finger at her.

"Are you pulling rank on me?" she asked incredulously.

"Yeah, I am."

"And I'm the head of aquatics telling you both to calm the hell down," Alex asserted, stepping in between them to break up the fight. Thankfully the remaining group members strolled up then interrupting their argument.

"We'll talk about this later," West vowed in a voice too low for anyone else to hear as he pulled Claire to her feet.

* * *

><p>"In the far corner, tonight we have the mimic with a gimmick, the empath from Romath, Deacon the Undefeated!" Money and tokens of every color and size from around the world quickly exchanged hands through the cheering crowd. Accented chants of praise for Deacon swelled to a deafening roar around the ring when the man stepped out of his gate with his arms raised above his head in the fashion of a true champion. "And in this corner, the bump in the night, the terror of the shadows, the Boogeyman, Sylar!" Rounds of booing and jeers followed him out of his gate into the gladiatorial pit.<p>

Arranged combat matches between "specials" was a highly illegal and frowned upon practice no matter where in the world you went, but that didn't stop every known nationality on the planet from being represented among the gambling spectators. "Sylar!" the man operating the event called out to him from atop the wall behind his gate. "Try not to kill this one. We're running out of guys to fight you and empaths are hard to come by." He gave him a devilish smirk in response.

"Whatever you say, Vick."

"Let's get ready to rumble!"

Deacon made a show of igniting bright blue flames in the palms of his hands and waved them around for the ladies holding sings proclaiming their love for him. Sylar had to laugh at the indignant look on his face when he telekinetically extinguished them. "So, tell me about your mother."

"I didn't know that you were another empath."

"I'm not," he sneered as they stepped in circles around one another in the ring, sizing up their opponent. "I _hate_ empaths."

He summoned his flames again, tossing a ball of the blue heat to test Sylar's reaction speed. "Good to know that you care then." Sylar easily dodged the attack, and spewed a cloud of fog to obscure vision of his movements. "Come out, come out, wherever you are." A snowball was lobbed in his direction and splattered him right between the eyes accompanied by impish cackles. Deacon wiped away the flakes in annoyance and evaporated the moisture with two wide cones of flame jets. The mixture of heat and cold left a humid mist to rise into the crowd above them. He looked around the ring for his foe, startled when a finger tapped his shoulder behind him.

Sylar waved before flicking his wrist and sending Deacon slamming into the opposite wall. "But really," he approached the other combatant, sparing him a dangerous smile, "tell me about your mother. What was she like?"

"She's dead. I killed her!"

"We can work with that." Elle appeared at his side, stroking his arm lovingly. She was true to her word, always there for him when he needed her, and even when he didn't want her to be, particularly when the hunger came calling for feeding time. "You know what to do, baby. Don't deny yourself what you really want. Feed."

_What I really want. _Sylar strolled up to Deacon in his most predatory manner, eyes ablaze with a lust for a power. The other man gave him a quick once over and started laughing, irritatingly void of the fear that Sylar expected. "What's so funny?" he demanded.

"Those your girls?" Deacon was helplessly pinned to the ring's wall so he gestured with his eyes to the tattoo on Sylar's forearm. He purposefully avoided looking down at the smiling faces knowing that their presence would haunt him more than enough later.

"No. They're not." _Not anymore._

"I didn't think so. The man they belong to wouldn't be wasting his time here," he swiveled his glance around to indicate their position. "They are very beautiful. Maybe when we're done here I'll find them. Enjoy making them _mine_. Especially the dark haired one. I'll bet she tastes sweet." The perverse mental images filling his mind in regards to the women made Sylar painfully sick to his stomach.

"Gabriel, don't lose your temper," Elle chided. "He's just trying to get into your head. Make you lose your focus." But it was already too late for her warnings. Sylar had lost his concentration holding Deacon in place and he slid to the dirt floor, sending a fireball in his direction while he was too distracted to avoid the attack. He groaned in pain, feeling the harsh sizzle of his flesh as it melted away from the side of his face. Deacon didn't waste a beat and blew a blast of wind to knock Sylar off his feet. The cheers of the spectators were a deafening roar when his opponent closed in on him, landing a heavy kick to his stomach that sent Sylar spinning, grimacing when his ribs cracked.

* * *

><p>Claire stumbled forward through the brush, tripping over a grouping of fallen fronds and into the rough bark of a tree clutching at her chest. Her face contorted into a fierce grimace as stabbing pains arched across her heart. "Claire?" West voiced concern, gripping her shoulders and helping her to roll away from the trunk so that she could slide down the surface to a sitting position, etching deep irritated scratches into the skin of her back where her chest piece slid up.<p>

"It's okay," she mustered. "It's just the same old pain. The same old pain." It was the only amount of pain that she ever felt, an unlikely reassurance that she was still capable of the sensation. That she still held the capacity for feeling anything. Her breathing hitched for a second more before the throb faded.

"Maybe you should sit this one out."

"No," she declared stubbornly, shaking her head to clear the haze.

"Claire, this is starting to happen more and more. You really need to tell the guys in the lab about it, or get a doc to check you out."

"She'll be fine," Kyle sighed. West shot their teammate a poisonous glare, but his eyes were too busy scanning the jungle horizon to catch it. When the others would fret over her, O'Keefe waved away their worries without an ounce of his own. She found it oddly appealing how far his faith in her strength and resolve could stretch. Even during her inexplicable episodes of that nature he had a way of giving the impression that he had seen it all before. That it was never surprising, or would come to any kind of fruition. Claire was no doll to be taken care of to him. She was unbreakable in his eyes. Indestructible.

"Commander," he addressed her, extending his hand past West to help her climb to barely steady feet.

"Move out," she ordered the group, motioning forward.

The First Response team was the only one that was no longer held to the old "one of us, one of them" philosophy of the Company and became solely comprised of "special" agents after developing a nasty reputation for losing members that didn't have abilities. Claire the "invincible girl" lead the team alongside her partner, West Rosen. Kyle O'Keefe and his partner Melanie Waters, an impressively powerful pre-cog, backed them.

The team's assignment that day was supposed to be a simple search and rescue mission. Belladonna Graves, a Botanist, and her research assistant had set up a camp on the island to study the plant life and Graves's evolved ability to manipulate it. Unfortunately for the scientists, a group of guerilla mercenaries had stumbled across them and taken them hostage hoping for a sizable ransom. Since it was a "special" related matter the Department had been called upon to recover the situation.

They continued their trek through the thick green flora, working slowly to keep their approach as silent as possible so that the element of surprise could used in the face of any hostile action. Melanie paused just a step behind Claire in her tracks and rested a light palm on her back to signal a halt. Claire automatically held up her fist so that the others would stop as well. "What's up, Mel?" Kyle whispered. She rolled her head around for a moment, her sightless eyes searching for something beneath her ever-present white blindfold and pointed to a tree on their right side. Claire and West remained at her side, scanning the surrounding bush for activity while Kyle stealthily crept his way to the spot the pre-cog had indicated with his pistol at the ready.

"Don't make a sound," he commanded to someone lurking in the brush, his ability of compulsion at work. "Drop your weapon, and come out." An enemy unit came within view and Kyle retrieved his gun for himself, tucking it away into one of his leg straps. "Take off your shoes."

"Kyle, what are you doing?" West hissed.

"Hard to run if you don't have any shoes," Kyle smirked back at him. The two men frequently had differing opinions on how hostile targets should be treated, but O'Keefe's methods were practical and efficient if only in a brutally dark way. He had been one of the only agents to ever bypass training requirements, even skipping through the rigorous Department standards of clocked field time and seniority, graduating straight to the top of the chain. Once when Claire had been feeling nosy about her new teammate's history she had inquired as why he got special treatment over other equally qualified agents. He had simply responded that he had gotten all of the training and experience he needed in the military, muttering something to himself about "_Rangers lead the way"._ Despite herself, Claire found his skills to be of an exceptional caliber, and even enjoyed working with him. He was strong, reliable, and dreadfully useful in combat.

"Like you really had any intention of letting him run anywhere," West mumbled disdainfully.

"Get down on the ground. Don't move. Don't make a sound." The hostile instantly obeyed and the group continued their journey knowing that he would pose no further threat. Once a person was subjected to O'Keefe's power of suggestion they were bound to it until he released them.

"There's seven of them," the pre-cog started once the group had reached the edge of a small camp hidden within the depths of the jungle brush. "Three hostages - two women, and a child. The women are both 'specials'." Claire could see Waters's blind eyes rolling beneath her blindfold. "Level ones. A florist and a whisperer."

"Okay, West, be ready to get the hostages out of their as soon as we strike." Her partner nodded in agreement. "Mel, I need you to hang back and catch any stragglers that get away. Kyle, you and me are going in first. I want you to try and compel as many as you can, and I'll run distraction."

"Got it, boss," he smirked, conspicuously drawing back the hammer on each of his side arms.

"Alex," Claire sounded over the coms, "be ready for extraction. We're going in."

"Ready and waiting," he called back lightly. Claire eyed everyone to make sure that they were prepared for the attack and turned to lead the charge, but was abruptly stopped by Melanie's hand on her shoulder again.

"You're going to save the wrong one," she whispered so that only Claire could hear her before she pushed forward ahead of her. There wasn't time to inquire as to what that prediction meant before gunfire assailed them.

Claire plunged into the heart of the action, drawing the shots to herself while Kyle made contact with the enemy units to her left. Melanie dispatched one that had immediately turned cowardly and sprinted for cover beyond the perimeter of the camp. West swooped in and grabbed the child, scooping the little girl onto his back and snatching the hand of one of the women before taking off into the skies above the canopy line. "Drop your weapon! Get down!" The fight seemed to flow over her in a haze of instinctual reaction, training, and muscle memory. She barely registered what she was doing as she gave in to her body's motions, disarming, pivoting to counter attack, disabling man after man, and keeping an eye on O'Keefe's back so that he could secure them.

A familiar pressure of projectiles colliding with her chest armor alerted Claire to the hostile that had rounded to her rear side and she spun around to retaliate just in time to see the last of the enemy units holding both the remaining hostage and Kyle at gun point simultaneously. Her first reaction was to run towards the hostage and pull her out of the way of danger, but recalling her teammate's foreshadowing words from only a few moments ago she second-guessed herself. There was only enough time to save one of them and in a flash Claire had hurdled over to Kyle, throwing them both to the ground and shielding him with her own body taking another shot meant for him in the process. Exactly two heartbeats later, Claire was scrambling to her feet to get to the hostage, but with a resounding crack that filled the air one last bullet lodged deep into the woman's chest and she fell to the ground where blood pooled beneath her.

* * *

><p>Sylar rolled onto his stomach to push himself up onto his knees just in time to catch a harsh kick to the jaw that sent him reeling backward again. "Gabriel!" Elle hovered over his face. "This isn't just some shmuck they pulled off the streets. You have to focus! Watch his moves - learn him!"<p>

Deacon rushed to continue pummeling him, blasting him with wave after wave of blue flame jets, and landing crushing blows where the muscle and bone were weakened. Sylar's body crackled with the electric current running over his skin as a power surge blew his opponent back. They both groaned, climbing to their feet and slightly smoking, the smell of burnt flesh and hair heavy in their noses. Extending his senses out to the other man, reading his mind, recalling his memories, and feeling his emotions, Sylar began to connect the dots on what made him tick.

The empath stomped his foot on the ground of the pit exercising a shock wave ability that rippled through the cracked dirt to knock Sylar out of balance. Levitating a few feet in the air with his telekinesis though, he was easily able to avoid the attack, using his time to analyze Deacon. A hush lulled the crowd around them and Deacon's attention drifted from his enemy to them, hints of fear echoing in his thoughts about falling into disfavor with his followers. He really had no one else in the world aside from the undulating bodies in the crowd, and he was nothing without them. With that little token of shared sensitivity to rejection came the euphoric rush of puzzle pieces coming together, and the reward of new power.

"Good boy," Elle's voice cooed in his ear. Sylar opened his palm before himself and delighted in the spectacle of the blue flames dancing there much to his foe's dismay.

"Sylar, stop screwing around and fight!" Vick shouted from the top of the ring in agitation.

It was Deacon's turn to grow careless as he lunged forward without tact only to be caught in the grips of a puppeteer's invisible threads, stringing him along into an awkward dance for their observers without his permission. Sylar laughed darkly as he made the empath bend into a curtsy before releasing him into his own control again.

The humiliated gladiator shuffled through half-cognizant thoughts, his entire body flushed with embarrassment and blind rage. "I meant what I said, Sylar," he spat. "I'll find _them_. And I'll enjoy watching blondie wrap her pretty little lips around my -" his last sentiment was rudely interrupted as his body was pulled into the air by an unseen hand twining its fingers around his airway. Deacon choked and sputtered after he was slammed into the floor with a sickly crunch of bone. Not to be outmatched though, he hoisted himself back to his feet, nursing his ribs and a dislocated shoulder, spitting blood, and possibly a few teeth. Sylar's expression had smoothed out into an unreadable one, not even his eyes betraying the deadly composure. He raised his hand, shaping his fingers into a mock pistol and pulled the trigger. Deacon spluttered a loud shriek of pain, doubling over where another rib had internally shattered. Sylar fired again, and again, and again until everyone present had become tensely aware that their undefeated champion had been undone. He was a living dead man because there was not a chance larger than winning a grand lottery jackpot that he would ever survive such grievous injuries.

Chants of "finish him" broke the silence, growing louder until only a dull roar of the spectators' wishes rang in Sylar's ears. He casually strolled over to Deacon, lifting the man to his knees with the invisible threads as he struggled to take in every shallow gurgled breath. A part of him wanted to whisper cruel sentiments into the empath's ear, but the agonizing fear and knowledge in his thoughts felt oddly like punishment enough. Sylar knew all too well what it meant to die alone without a single soul to mourn for the loss. _Finish him. Finish him. Finish him._

Someone who might have known better would have called it an act of mercy, but the pit match was a show, and Sylar was a fantastic actor. He calmly placed his palms on either side of Deacon's face allowing for a dramatic pause, and then swiftly jerked the man's head to the side so that his neck snapped and his hollow shell of a bloodied and broken body flopped into the dirt. The crowd erupted into enthusiastic cheers in celebration of their new champion.

* * *

><p>O'Keefe had immediately rebounded from his position on the ground where Claire had toppled them over and dropped the final hostile with two precise shots from his pistol. She had whipped out a knife and set about digging out the fatal slug that had pierced the hostage's heart, and dripped her own blood into the wound hoping to revive the woman but to no avail. They had failed to save the poor victim.<p>

More than a little disgruntled, Claire repeatedly struck the woman's chest with balled up fists pleading with her to wake up and come back. Melanie quietly sat by while Kyle gripped his leader's shoulders and pulled her away from the body, holding Claire to himself so that he became the one she punched until she was too tired to continue the struggle.

"Claire," he spoke soothingly, pushing her hair away from her face. "Claire, stop."

"She's dead," she sobbed, mindlessly wiping her face against his armor. "I - I don't understand. My blood… Why did she have to die?"

"They were already poisoned," Melanie piped up in a somber tone. "We can get an antidote to the others now, but this one was just… meant to die." The pre-cog sullenly sunk her head into her hands silently wondering where she went wrong. Surely she had warned their leader about saving the wrong one...

"People die, Claire. It happens everyday." She looked up into Kyle's face, but his deep-set brown eyes wandered beyond her gaze in the thousand yard stare of a man whom had already witnessed too many horrific events in his young life. But after a moment he returned her look, his eyes softening more than she had ever seen before with a sense of emotion that was completely foreign to his normally distant personality. "But you saved _me_," Kyle whispered, trailing a calloused thumb down her cheek to wipe away the tears that lingered there.

"Hey," West called to them as he touched down. Kyle rapidly detached himself from Claire and stepped away like he had been caught doing something he knew he wasn't supposed to. Not that the motion served to do anything other than call attention to itself. West's eyes lingered on him suspiciously for a long moment before he decided to shrug the issue off until a more suitable time of confrontation. "Where's the other hostage? Alex has our transport ready to go." Three sets of eyes faltered downward to relish in their failure anew. "Oh," he simply conceded after catching sight of the body.

The group pulled themselves together and rounded up the subjugated hostiles to take them back for trial prosecution of their crimes against "specials". Along the way a trilling ring of a cell phone caught Claire's attention and she pulled the communication device from the body of one of the fallen enemy units. The phone continued to ring insistently as they all stared at one another and then back to it in wonder as to how they were supposed to handle the situation.

"We should probably answer that," West spoke up. "We have to notify the next of kin, and whoever's on the other end might know who we need to talk to." It seemed a cruel thing to announce a death so suddenly or informally, but as the phone rang again in her hand, Claire knew that it would be much worse for the family to have to suffer the uncertainty of what may have happened to their loved one. "I can do it," he offered, meaning to take the phone from her, but Claire pulled away from his reach. As the team leader she was personally responsible for the mission's failure, and as such, she also felt directly responsible for how to deal with the death.

"Hello?" she shakily answered the call.

"Bell? Where have you been? What happened? What's wrong?" a frantic voice on the other end pitched.

"I'm sorry," she faltered, getting a sense of dread in her stomach. "May I ask who this is?"

"Xander Graves. Who the hell is this, and where is my sister?"

"This is Claire Bennet with the Department of Safety and Regulation for Enhanced Citizens, Mr. Graves. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I have some bad news."

"Where is Bell? What's wrong with my sister?"

"She was taken," Claire stuttered, choking back the fresh tightening in her throat as she glanced back at the body. "A group of guerillas took her and her assistant hostage near their research station. We were sent to retrieve them, and… I'm sorry. I'm so sorry… We lost her. Your sister was a casualty."

* * *

><p>"Damn it, Sylar. I told you not to kill him," Vick seethed. Sylar dragged a rag over his forehead and the corners of his mouth to wipe away the sweat and blood.<p>

"The crowd wants what it wants," he chuckled darkly. "And when they're happy, they spend more money here which, if I'm not mistaken, makes _you_ happy."

"Whatever," Vick sighed. "You want your cut this time?"

"Nope. I got what I came for." He leaned over on his bar stool to the woman on the next seat over with a cigarette hanging from her lips and flicked his fingers to light it with his newly acquired ability. Vick shook his head in tired resignation and walked away while the brunette in the skimpy cocktail dress made eyes at the winning competitor.

"Jackie," she introduced herself.

"Sylar," he returned with a lopsided smirk.

"I know. I caught your little show back there," she smiled seductively. He could see her pupils growing larger with the sight of something she appreciated, and felt her body heat increase. The thoughts rolling through her mind and the emotions ensnaring his senses were unmistakably lustful. Jackie had sized him up like a piece of meat and found herself wanting. She didn't really care about him in any particular way. She just wanted to indulge in riding the bull for a night.

Sylar had to repress the urge to laugh a little. It wasn't all that long ago that a woman like her, or _any_ females for that matter wouldn't have given Gabriel Gray the time of day. _Surreal. I believe that sums it up. And maybe irony. Every woman in this place would take me home tonight if I showed them the slightest bit of interest, but the one girl _I _want…_

His cell phone chirped from inside of the jacket pocket slung over his shoulder and he plucked it out to view a new text message. _D.S.R.E.C. agents coming. Get out now. -Rebel_

He flipped the phone closed and replaced it in his pocket, sliding his jacket on over his torn, singed, and blood-stained shirt just as a troop of Department operatives stormed into the club. People scattered in droves to the four winds as fast as possible to avoid arrest for being involved with the operation. "Time to go," Sylar muttered to the brunette whom had remained at his side in spite of the danger of prosecution. He grabbed her hand and lead them out of a back door into an alleyway where another group of agents waited for similar methods of escape.

"Gabriel Gray, you are under arrest for murder," one of them announced, stepping forward to take the lead. He snorted contemptuously and rolled his eyes, making to keep walking. A warning shot sounded behind him and he turned on his heel to face the troops again. Focusing on the agent that had fired his weapon, the man's body began to tremble. With a quick snap of his thumb and finger the armored operative shattered into countless shards over the pavement. The others naturally flinched away before remembering their training and maneuvering themselves as a single unit to incapacitate him.

Sylar sped around and between the agents in a blur, ripping off their protective helmets, snapping necks, and slitting throats. They were helpless against him. Completely unprepared for anyone half as powerful. "Flunkies," he scoffed at the bodies that littered the alley around his feet. "Couldn't even spare the _Second_ Response team for _me_?" he addressed the lone Department representative that he had left unscathed in a vicious sneer.

She shied away when he approached, quaking shamelessly in her standard issue boots. "I'm not going to kill you," he promised once he had her backed up to the brick wall of the next building. "You're going to play messenger for me. I want you to tell your superiors and anybody that will listen, that anymore agents sent after me will be shipped back to the Department in shoe boxes. Or," he paused for effect, "what I can _find_ of them. Do we have an understanding?" She nodded emphatically. "Good."

Jackie was still waiting for him beyond the scene of chaos. "Your place or mine?"

* * *

><p>Xander Graves stared blankly at the picture of Claire Bennet that filled his computer screen. His mind was still reeling from the news of his twin sister's death, and that the blonde smiling at him from the Department's web page was responsible for her passing.<p>

His sister was his best, and frankly, _only_ friend. She was the only one that had ever understood him and accepted him. She had protected him from the world when others couldn't look beyond the monstrous surface to see the man beneath.

"_Don't listen to them, Andy. What they say or think doesn't matter. You are who you are, and that's special," _she had told him over and over again until he at least pretended that he believed it. Belladonna had been his whole world. And in an instant she was gone.

Claire Bennet would have to pay.

**To be continued...**


	8. I Love The Way You Lie

**7**

**I Love The Way You Lie**

* * *

><p><em>December, 2012<em>

Construction efforts on the other end of the block had continued nearly around the clock, activity only ceasing during the designated sleeping period. Apparently, as many precautions as were regulated in regards to Level 5 agitating the captives beyond what was strictly necessary had been deemed a "bad idea". Claire had gotten a small amount of amusement from the sentiment when the day came that the renovations to the prison ward were no longer restricted to the opposite side of the containment facility.

Claire had been more than happy for the brief reprieve from her cell as she was escorted by no less than ten armed guards up to the Level 4 block. Level 4 felt like an all expenses paid vacation to the Caribbean despite her steadily increasing number of chaperones. At least until her fever spiraled out of control in the dry, tepid air.

She was slightly confused for a moment when the fabric of reality around her seemed to fluctuate and ripple, bursting with bright ambient colors and distorting. Even the air around her appeared to break down into its baser components that floated along listlessly while she tried to reach out and touch them. It was all a bit disorienting to the point that control over her balance was lost. The cool tiles of the floor were a welcome relief to the fiery skin on her face. She thought she could almost see the heat waves rolling away from her.

"Shit. Somebody get Langely down here! We've got a code orange on the Bennet girl!" Claire could hear distant voices tensed in argument above her and feel the presence of shuffling feet. A small crowd had gathered around but none were willing to touch her.

"Claire?" Familiar dark-skinned hands belonging to her doctor gently rolled her over onto her back and pushed her hair out of her face. "Claire, can you hear me?" Light was being shined into her eyes but she couldn't find the energy to respond. "We have to get her back into her cell now!"

"The modifications you requested aren't finished yet though."

"Do you see this?" she asked angrily, jesting to her patient. "She's running at temperatures that would kill a normal person!"

"But Whitlocke gave us orders -"

"I don't give a _damn_ what Whitlocke said. This stress is killing her, and if we lose _her_… I don't think I need to tell you what Whitlocke would make happen then. Get her back to her cell." When the guard continued to hesitate the doctor spat a reproachful, "Now!"

Hours later Claire woke to the sound of muffled voices. "Have we had any luck in finding _you know who_ yet?"

"No ma'am. We're looking everywhere, but… I don't think we're going to find him unless he wants us to."

"I don't understand. He _has_ to know that something is wrong by now. Why hasn't he come back?"

"You don't think that maybe their connection thingy got severed? I mean, if her powers are on the fritz…"

With a light groan she rolled over in her bed, pulling her arm up to spare her eyes against the blinding light. Three construction workers eyed her nervously as they hurried to put the finishing touches on their work. The wall separating her compartment from the next over had been almost completely removed and in its place stood a glass barrier made of the same materials as the viewing windows with an electronically locking door conjoining the two spaces.

She made to stand which caused the fearful workers to skitter into the safety of the other cell while two armed guards came to block the way. For a brief moment, seeing that the door in the room over was wide open, she contemplated pushing her way through the guards to make an escape attempt. However, after roaming a protective hand across her stomach and feeling a slight fluttering sensation there, oddly like bubbles… _Wouldn't be a good idea. Too risky._

* * *

><p><em>September, 2012<em>

Peter crept through the door of his Paris apartment as silently as a thief even though he knew his companion wouldn't hear the entrance. A wave of deep shame rolled over him for the action. He had wanted their relationship to be one built on a sound foundation of trust and honesty, but… There was always that "but" that hung around his neck like a noose. In her eyes he was a good man working diligently to help those around him and make the world a better place. How could he tell her about the extracurricular activities that urged him out of their bed at night once she had fallen asleep? How could he explain to her the revolting _need_ that had him sneaking back into his own home like a criminal after scrubbing away blood that did not belong to him?

The answer was simple. He couldn't. So night after restless night he held her close to him until her heartbeat and breathing slowed into a gentle rhythm, and dreams of their future together enveloped her in a peaceful slumber. Then he would redress himself into something more appropriate and hurriedly lurk out into the shadows of the streets, obediently heeding the call of the night. The bittersweet call of the hunt that he feared would never be sated.

An obtrusive cough sounded behind him nearly sending him into the ceiling, leaving his skin behind. Dread. Dread was the stone that sunk to the pit of his stomach as he turned from the door to face her. Emma sat in a chair with her arms crossed over her night robe with a steely expression on her face that severely scolded him and made him shrink back in fear the way a mother would look down upon her teenager that she had caught sneaking out in the middle of the night.

He wanted to spill his guts right then and there. Explain everything, the good, the bad, and the bloody, crossing his fingers and hoping against hope that she could find it in herself to forgive him for his transgressions. But his throat was mysteriously dry and the words no matter how hard he tried to eject them would not come. The rising sun peeking through the window behind her cast a red-orange halo around her blonde hair as she rose from the chair to walk away, slamming their bedroom door in his face when he attempted to follow.

Shame was no longer a strong enough word to express what he felt in her disappointment. It was more like a spiteful self-loathing laced with the venom of a thousand poisonous reptiles. Peter leaned against their door and slowly allowed himself to slide to the floor listening to the tears that pit-patted on the other side.

_I should have told her. I should have told her about the _hunger_ a year ago when it started. Or, at least before the wedding…_

_Six months ago_

_Peter leaned casually against a column of the pavilion, sipping his glass of champagne and contentedly watching his bride twirl around the dance floor with her brother, Chris. As soon as the dance number ended with a round of jovial clapping and another began, a man that no one seemed to recognize swept her up in his arms, spinning her around gracefully and leading her about._

"_You look beautiful tonight," he whispered into her ear. The face may have been different, but the colors of his voice were more than familiar._

_Emma glanced around nervously for a moment before projecting an unspoken question that she knew he would hear. 'Sylar?' He nodded in confirmation with a sly wink that made her spread a broad smile across her lips. 'I'm glad you came.'_

'_Wouldn't miss it for the world, sweetheart,' he thought back._

'_Have you seen Claire yet?'_

'_No. Not yet.'_

'_You should.' He shook his head obstinately with a tight-lipped frown. 'She may not know it, but I think she misses you. She's been… _different_ since you left. Like she's sad somehow. Peter says she's been acting out a lot too. Doing dangerous things…'_

'_I know,' he sighed. There was always a residual ache that only partially belonged to himself. 'Do me a favor though and let's keep my little visit here a secret between us. I don't want too many people knowing.' _

_She nodded in acquiescence. 'I didn't hear a thing,' she joked with an impish giggle that made him genuinely grin for the first time in months. 'I miss you too,' she added, leaning to grasp him a little tighter in an inconspicuous hug._

'_Not half as much as I miss you.' He gave her a peck on the cheek when the song ended. 'Stay safe, and enjoy your wedding gift.' He flashed her a wry grin before leaving her to her next dance partner and snatching a glass of champagne from the serving tray of a wandering waiter._

"_That was quite the wedding, Petrelli. You're a lucky man."_

_Peter drained his glass, suddenly irritable when his former comrade sidled up next to him under the guise of a stranger. "I don't remember _you_ being on the guest list."_

"_I don't remember that ever stopping me before."_

_His temper flared, and he gripped Sylar by his tuxedo jacket, slamming his back up against the column. "You turned me into a monster," he snarled in a low tone so that none of the guests would hear. _

_To his extreme agitation Sylar only laughed and took another drink. _

_"I just settled the score a bit. We're _even_ now. And for the record… _I_ didn't turn you into anything. You had the exact same choices I had, but this time it was _you_ making them. That's a hell of a lot more than you offered _me_."_

_Peter lost his grasp and stumbled backwards with the weight of a harsh truth to burden his shoulders. Sylar shot him a spiteful smirk as he straightened his jacket and drained his glass, setting it down on the railing before walking away. He may not have crashed the wedding party with the intention to stir up old grudges, but it was extremely difficult to resist the urge when facing the man responsible for breaking his heart so brutally. They were supposed to have been friends. Peter was someone that he had given his complete trust. And he had betrayed him in the most heinous of ways whether it had been meant to be so or not._

_He found Edgar and Matt leaning back on stools at the open bar prepared to drink a toast to the new happy couple. Snatching Matt's shot glass right out of his hand, he swallowed the aged brown liquor it contained. Parkman muttered a "Hey!" in protest, but Edgar squinted his eyes at him suspiciously._

"_Sylar?"_

"_In the not-quite-mine flesh."_

"_Sylar!" Edgar announced in half-drunken glee hopping off his stool to gift him with an uncoordinated hug and slap on the back despite the dark man's insistence for quiet. "Where you been?"_

"_Good to see ya man… I think." Matt extended his hand for a hearty shake. _

"_Singapore mostly. There's a whole neighborhood devoted to refugee 'specials' on the run from the Department. Some good people there." The back of his neck tingled, sending a shiver down the length of his spine and forcing him to turn around. _

_Claire was standing a few mere yards away talking to Noah, the arm of another male snaked around her waist. He vaguely recognized the kid as the one he had seen from a rooftop months before; nearly as tall as himself with sharp brown eyes and dark shaggy hair. A pang of bitter jealousy crawled through him when he watched Noah grin and slap the guy on the shoulder in a clear gesture of acceptance, while he held _her_ even tighter to himself no less._

"_Sylar," Matt warned, catching on to a few stray thoughts. "This a _wedding_ man. People are supposed to be happy, not screaming and running for their lives."_

"_Don't worry. No bloodshed from me tonight. Emma would kick my ass for ruining her reception and I'd have to let her do it." They all got a half-hearted chuckle out of that thought. "What's his name?"_

"_Sylar," Parkman warned again._

"_I'm just asking for a _name_," he muttered with a roll of his eyes._

"_Err…" Edgar creased his brow in thought, searching for the information. "Winston? Wesley? Wes? I dunno, mate. Something like that. Only met the little ponce once."_

"_It's West," Matt corrected, pouring another round of shots. "He's not a _bad_ kid, Sy."_

"_I wasn't impressed," Edgar mumbled, taking his glass and splashing just a bit over the side so that he had to lick it off his hand._

"_I can see Bennet likes him."_

_Parkman heaved a heavy sigh and slammed his shot down. "They have a history. Noah 'bagged and tagged' the kid several years ago, and then I guess he came back to help save Claire once." Sylar contemptuously rolled his eyes and drank his own shot, giving the bottle a nasty glare when he turned around to pour another. "He's her new partner too - at the Department. They've got a lot of field time clocked together." He didn't bother with the glass after that statement, instead opting to take a deep pull straight from the bottle. Bennet had "bagged and tagged" _him_ once upon a time. _He_ had helped to save Claire a lot more than once. He had a running record for completed field tasks with her. And yet, Sylar was being left in the dark for the so-called "greater good" while the miniature version of himself was free to move in, and with Noah's apparent blessing no less._

"_Oy, don't be bogarting," Edgar grumbled, stealing the bottle back. "Don't worry, mate. He ain't got nothin' on you."_

Except for the girl_, he thought to himself. _That should have been me_._

_Observing West leave Claire's side to go congratulate Peter and Emma, Sylar decided to seize an opportunity. He drank his last shot, tugged on his collar to make sure it was straight and stalked off to greet her._

"_Oh boy," Matt muttered, lining up the glasses again._

"_Hello, Claire."_

"_Sylar."_

_He had to struggle to remain nonchalant as she calmly sipped her own glass of champagne while looking anywhere but directly at him. "You always know, don't you?"_

"_Always." She met his eyes momentarily, and while the gaze reflected all of the hate and revulsion that he expected, there was also a distinct lack of fear and something akin to curiosity lurking beneath the surface. "What do you want?"_

"_Right now, a dance." Sylar didn't even bother fighting the smirk as she polished off the remnants of her drink and passed the glass along to one of the staff, voluntarily extending her hand for him to take. It wasn't like she could exactly refuse such a modest request while being surrounded by innocents and loved ones. Noah quirked a brow at him, somehow knowing as he lead them onto the floor with the other circling couples. Edgar raised his glass to the sight while Matt rolled his eyes behind them. Emma beamed, Peter grunted in distaste, and somewhere in the crowd Mohinder was pointing a finger at them asking questions of Angela in hushed whispers while everyone else present looked on in blissful ignorance. _

"_You are aware I assume that you're probably committing a dozen felonies just by being here tonight. What would the Department think if they knew their little Claire Bear was socializing with some of Interpol's most wanted?"_

"_No one from the D.S.R.E.C. even knows I'm here, and I don't have a problem with turning my head for a while when it comes to my family and friends."_

"_And how are things at the Department?"_

"_Couldn't be better." Shiver. Lie._

"_I hear you've been looking for me."_

"_Of course."_

"_Figured out how to find me yet?"_

"_Almost." He chuckled to himself as he spun her around and brought her back into his arms, holding her a little closer than was strictly necessary for a formal occasion._

"_Who's that?" West inquired as he made his way back to Bennet's side, watching his date exchange a rather heated stare with a complete stranger._

"_An old… friend," Noah answered with a touch of mischief in his voice. Looking back to the obviously confused younger man beside him, he elaborated, "A Rebel"._

"_Oh." West stuffed his hands into his pockets and did his best to turn away the creeping sting of jealousy. Somehow the way that Claire and her dancing partner regarded one another seemed a little more intense than simple friendship._

"_New boyfriend?" _

"_Old one," Claire responded following Sylar's glance back to West. _"_If you're here to kill someone I think you'll be disappointed."_

"_And why is that?"_

"_You're a little outnumbered."_

"_I guess it's a good thing that I'm not out for blood tonight then."_

"_Why _are_ you here?"_

"_Just crashing the party, Claire."_

"_Enjoying yourself?"_

"_Of course. If there's anything a Petrelli knows how to do well, it's fight and _party_." She interrupted their curt question and answer session with a modest laugh._

"_That we do."_

_He stopped dancing for a moment to sweep a lock of her hair back behind her ear, mildly surprised when she didn't shy away from the movement but instead had to fight a forgotten reflex to lean into his hand. "Are you happy, Claire?"_

"_What would make you think I'm not?"_

"_Just answer the question."_

"_Yes, I am." Shudder. Lie._

"_Sometimes I love the way you lie to me," he said while spinning her around again and then bending her back into a dip with the ending notes of the song. "This isn't one of them." They shared an intense look for a long moment before remembering the world around them and righting themselves. _

_Waves of fury washed against his back and he turned around to see an enraged Peter fighting to get past Emma, spewing mental obscenities in his direction. "Time to go." Claire reached out to grab his arm, but he dodged the motion and kept from facing her again. "Stop looking for me, Claire. These people here tonight, their lives are too short for you spend them chasing after me." A gust of wind later and he was gone._

"Emma, please open the door," Peter pleaded with her, pawing at the wooden barrier and reaching out with his extra senses to compensate for the lack of auditory communication. "Emma… _Please_, just talk to me. Let me explain… Please. Em…"

The door to their bedroom was flung open and his wife finally revealed her tear-stained face to him. He climbed to his feet and made an effort to embrace her but she shied away from him, holding an accusatory finger in his direction. "Answer me honestly," she demanded through a swollen throat in already broken speech. "Are you having an affair? Is it because I'm aging and you're not?"

"_What_? No! Emma, no. I would _never_ do that to you."

"Then why, Peter? What are you doing sneaking out in the middle of the night like that?" She lost her patience with trying to get her point across verbally and lapsed into frantic sign language. He wanted to tell her. He really did. But how was she supposed to react to "hearing" that her husband was a part-time murderer?

"Emma," he reached to place his hands on either side of her face, gripping her harder than he meant to when she tried to get away. "Listen to me. Emma!" he shook her slightly. "Look at me!" She started digging her nails into his arms, struggling to escape him. _You never saw me come in this morning. I was with you the entire night, _he raked into her mind with Parkman's borrowed power. _I love you, and you love me. I would never have an affair, and neither would you. You're happy. We're happy. And now you're going to go back to sleep._

She instantly went slack against him and he pulled her back into their bed, drawing the blankets over her and then rushing to change out of his bloodied clothes before climbing in beside her. Peter had barely gotten his arm around her before the alarm went off, vibrating the mattress and flashing an overhead light. Emma groggily opened her eyes and rolled into him. "Morning," she cooed with a sleepy smile on her lips. He grinned back and gave her a tender kiss while disregarding the violence of his own thoughts.

_Oh, God. I've become my father._

* * *

><p>So, Jackie hadn't lasted very long. She was just another shiny new toy in a list of many that had ended up broken in his hands. <em>This is why we can't have nice things, <em>Sylar chided himself as he unceremoniously dumped her shrouded corpse into a roadside ditch to be found by the local residents later that day. At least she had gotten her money's worth in the metaphorical sense, going out screaming in a way that wasn't entirely ordinary for one of his victims. After all, it wasn't _his_ fault if he had closed his eyes and allowed his imagination to wander to the woman whose body he really wished it was writhing beneath him and then lost control, releasing a bit more electrical current than was necessary.

_Oh well. Let her be a cautionary tale. You don't take candy from strangers, and you don't go to bed with a serial killer expecting all to end well._ Sparing one last cursory glance to the lifeless fingers that had flopped out where the sheet had come untucked, he gave a slight sad sigh. _I really need to find someone less breakable._

Arriving back at the apartment complex he called his home, he grabbed his mail and headed up to his floor as though nothing were amiss even while a few loitering tenants watched him warily out of the corners of their eyes and gave him a wide berth in their comings and goings. He had paused just outside his door to look over an unmarked letter when his neighbor appeared before him.

"You missed a spot," she chirped while noisily popping a sucker out of the corner of her mouth.

"_Ivy_," he greeted with narrowed eyes. The girl couldn't have been more than six or seven, and while the other residents avoided him at all costs out of a natural sense of fear towards predators she was, at times, irritatingly void of such instinct.

"My mommy says you're a bad man."

Sylar couldn't help but chuckle as she continued to smile through the harsh truths that even a child of her age could easily understand. He knelt to be eye level with her. "You're mommy would be right."

"I don't think so." Ivy moved a long lock of curly red hair away from the merry green eye that it covered. "You're an onion! Like Shrek!"

"_What_?"

"Like Shrek," she repeated. She gave him an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes when he failed to understand her meaning. "Shrek is a big stinky ogre who's grumpy all the time, but he's like an onion 'cause he's got _layers_!"

"Are you calling me a stinky ogre?"

"Sometimes, after you been out all night. But right now you're just dirty. You got a smudge on your nose." Ivy licked the end of her thumb and commenced to cleaning a spot off of his face before looking down at the dark red streak left behind. "Is that blood?"

"Yes it is," he admitted, not wanting to lie to the kid. "Shouldn't you be with your mother, safe from all the monsters out here?"

"You're not going to let anything hurt me," she proclaimed cheerfully.

"Because I'm an onion?"

"No, silly. 'Cause of them," the little girl pulled up his sleeve to indicate the two females resting in ink on his forearm. Annoyed by the sudden view of what could have been his most painful memory, Sylar quickly rolled the sleeve back down and breathed sweet relief when Ivy's mother appeared in their family's adjacent entrance.

"Ivy?" the woman called, carefully looking after the close proximity between her daughter and the criminal. Taking a timid step forward and never releasing him from her gaze she commanded the girl to come back inside.

Turning his attention back to the unmarked letter still resting in his hand, Sylar mentally willed his door to unlock and open, and then to close behind him. Upon opening the envelope and closer examination he found a folded half piece of paper for contents with a quickly scrawled: _We need to talk - N.B._

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," he muttered to himself sarcastically. "Morning, Luke," he mumbled as he poured a few beetles out from the container that rested next to the raven's cage. "One of these days I'll figure out how to fix you." The bird ruffled its feathers and attempted to nip at his fingers in response.

Stepping into his bedroom, Sylar commenced to meticulously changing his sheets and then opening his closet door. "Morning, Claire." Inside, huddled on the floor next to his spare set of boots was a blonde female with duct tape restraining her wrists and sealing her mouth. Using the invisible threads of a puppet master, he lifted her slim form and released her from the bonds. "It's time to dye your hair again," he commented softly while noting her darkening roots. He gave her a soft kiss on the forehead and proceeded back to the kitchen. "Hungry?"

In truth, the restrictions to the girl's movements were probably no longer necessary since she had given up on the prospect of escape less than a month after her captivity began, but it gave _him_ a sense of security to know that she wouldn't be running away. Like a more tangible Elle, she would never leave him.

_Ten months ago_

_Sylar strolled into a downtown library in Miami, Florida, looking to intercept a message from Rebel. He reached the section that contained his one-time guide into the world of "specials", Chandra Suresh's, "Activating Evolution", only to find the designated copy of the book resting in the hands of a sweet looking twenty-something brunette. "Interested in abilities?" he had asked casually._

_She was startled for a moment by the sudden sound of his voice, having been firmly engrossed in her reading. "Um, yeah, I guess." She gave him a nervous smile. "I'm taking an intro class for Evolved Genetics, and my professor said that this would be a good place to start." _

"_It is. I knew him once - Suresh. Shame what happened to him." Sylar summoned a blue crackling of electricity to his fingertips and watched her eyes follow the sparks with envious fascination. _

"_Wow. I've read so much about them on the internet and stuff, but… I've never actually met one before - one of you." She reached out to touch the dancing pulses but he pulled away before she could make contact. There was something oddly familiar around her. The brilliant blue of her eyes with the flash of sharp wit behind them, the soft curves of her cheek bones and lips, an airy smell around her with hints of vanilla, it all reminded him so strongly of _her_…_

"_What's your name?"_

"_Elizabeth… Gordon."_

"_Any relation to the Texas Gordons?"_

"_I don't know. Never met anyone from Texas before either, but maybe," she gave him curious smile._

"_How do you feel about getting to know 'one of them' personally?" He shot her a sly wink that flushed her cheeks._

_After a few hours they were finishing up their dinner at a nearby restaurant and Elizabeth sat thoroughly mesmerized before him as he told her stories about what it was like to live with abilities and some of the people he knew. Sylar recalled for her more than a few tales about Claire without even realizing that his "ex-girlfriend" as he had decided to describe her had become the prime topic of conversation to a point that his date had become quite uncomfortable. "It's odd that I would happen to meet you like I did. I look at you and if I try I can almost see her."_

"_It sounds like you really loved her," she remarked cautiously, her eyes wandering over the exposed portions of his tattoo and her senses beginning to flare with warning signs._

"_I do," he admitted before he could recover from the little fumble, his brain not quite moving as quickly as his mouth. "How do you feel about going blonde? I think it could be a good look for you."_

_Elizabeth leaned as far away from him as her chair allowed and darted her eyes around anxiously. Sylar could hear her heart picking up in pace. "So, um, why did you say you guys broke up?"_

_He felt an overwhelming need to be honest with the girl, but wasn't about to let a connection as close to the one that he had lost slip away. Wicked deeds tumbled around in his thoughts for a moment as he processed the possibilities. "Apparently I have a bad habit of killing people that she doesn't like." Elizabeth's pupils dilated with fear and her pulse jumped, nerves transmitting signals for a fight or flight response. "Shh, don't be afraid," he assured while moving closer to her, but when she made to bolt for an exit he had to exercise his power to control her every movement successfully terrifying her even more. "Don't be afraid," he repeated. "I'm not going to hurt _you_. I can care about you, Claire -"_

"_I'm not Claire," she pleaded through gritted teeth. "Please, let me go. Just let me go, and I _swear _I'll never tell anyone." Silent tears streamed down her cheeks._

"_I can take care of you. I can protect you, and give you everything you've ever wanted if you just stay with me. Be mine again, Claire, please. Just mine."_

"Another one?" she timidly asked, coming to sit beside him on the couch with a plate of the waffles he had made. Sylar was intently staring at his newest painting in a long series that depicted various stages of some kind of battle between himself and a dark haired version of Claire. There were also several others that conveyed striking images of what at first glance appeared to be a nuclear explosion. Horrifying picture after picture showing tales of sweeping fires leaving only a desert of glass in their wake.

"Yes. It seems to be the only future I can see anymore."

"Is that _her_?" she indicated the feminine figure in the portraits with a slight undertone of jealousy in her voice. His little captive had adjusted quite well to life at his side which, while maybe not _ideal_ at all times, he had made every effort to provide for her comforts and whims. Sylar took her out wherever she wanted to go, nearly whenever. He bought her the pretty things that he spotted her admiring through display cases, and her every necessity was met.

"Yes, it is."

"What does it all mean?"

"I don't know." While he had been careful to keep strict control over his temper in the presence of the girl, she had also quickly learned that some provocations such as incessant questioning were best left to the wayside and she let the subject fall away. He leaned back into the couch and watched her finish eating with a serene smile hovering over the corners of his mouth.

"It was very good, thank you." She took her plate into the kitchen and washed it dutifully. For a serial killer who often came home filthy and bloodied, Sylar was incredibly meticulous about his living space. All habits that she had picked up on and followed accordingly lest he have to punish her and leave her in the closet for longer than while he was away.

"Come," he waved after her so that she trailed behind him back into the bedroom. The girl automatically climbed into his bed beside him so that his arms could snake around her body and hold her close to him, her head resting on his chest. Out of all the strangeness that came from their arrangement his occasional inexplicable need to cuddle was hardly the worst so she easily complied.

"Sylar?"

"Yes, Claire?"

"Can I ask you something without you getting mad at me?"

"…I'll try."

"Did you kill the woman that was here last night like the others?"

He sighed heavily and she started to fear that she might have accidentally poked the bear. "Yes I did." She tried to snuggle even tighter against him to persuade his temper to remain in good graces.

"Sylar?" she inquired again after a long moment of silence.

"Hmm?"

"Why don't you ever…"

"What, Claire?"

"Why don't you try to sleep with me like the others?" Sensing a possible consequence to her observations she quickly corrected, "Not that I'm saying I _want_ you to or anything, but…"

Another sigh broke into a light chuckle. "Because you're not like the others, Claire. You're _special_."

"Do you want me though? Claire? I mean - I'm not like totally hideous or anything?"

"You know what happens to _them_. If I lose control over what I'm doing for even a second…" Sylar roamed his fingers down her side and gave her a minimum jolt of voltage in demonstration that caused her muscles to spasm. "You're beautiful, and I want you in _every_ way, but I don't want to take the chance of breaking you like the others." He blessed the crown of her head with a kiss for proof.

"I love you, Claire."

* * *

><p>Claire strolled through the halls of the D.S.R.E.C. looking for her partner while on the phone with her mother. She found him as well as the other boys hanging out in the systems analysis sector. West and Alex both were standing behind the department techs watching what they were doing on their monitors intently enough that no one even noticed her entrance.<p>

"Dude, seriously? It's so O.P. that you can just shift out of my Chains of Ice like that…" A cracked giggle sounded from beyond her view behind Alex. "And again with the H.O.T.s and the bleeds! Stop hacking the game, Micah."

"No hacking necessary," he laughed again. "It's not my fault if you don't know how to use your silences."

"Oh, watch for the Feral Charge man!" Alex abruptly warned with a face palm. "He doesn't even _need_ to shift into Bear Form. He's just going to Rake you to death while you're keyboard turning trying to find him."

"Ha, ha, ha. Whatever dude. Next match I'm getting my Warlock out."

"Claire? Are you listening to me?"

"Yeah, Mom. Sorry." Her attention was quickly brought back to her phone conversation and the guys all turned around to look at her with guilty embarrassment like they had been caught red-handed in the act of doing something wrong, or in their case, _nerdy_.

"Hey, Mrs. B.," West called out. Claire put her on speaker so that everyone could hear.

"Hello, West," Sandra greeted. "We're having a family dinner tonight and you're coming too."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And, Alex?" her mother seemed to sense his hesitation even without being able to see him. "It's meatloaf…" she bribed shamelessly.

"Yup, I'll be there too," he responded politely before doing a silent fist pump of celebration.

"I assume Zachary is present as well?"

"And accounted for, Mrs. B."

"You're invited too. I expect everybody to be here by 19:00 hours."

A chorus of, "Yes, Mrs. B.," echoed back through the line.

"And, Claire," Sandra took on a more serious tone so that she turned off the speaker function. "You're father is coming tonight too so you know the drill."

"No cell phones, no telling anybody where we're going, or that we ever saw him in the country. We got it."

"Good. I'll see you tonight then. 7:00 don't forget. Love you, sweetheart."

"Love you too, Mom." While hanging up the phone an afterthought crossed her mind. "Do you want to come with, Micah? She usually cooks for an army so there's going to be more than enough."

"Not if it's meatloaf night and I'm there," Alex piped up with a victorious grin so that she slapped at his arm playfully.

"Thanks, but I can't. I've kind of got a date tonight."

"Yeah, over the _net_," Zach teased.

"Who's the lucky girl?"

"Molly."

"_Aw_, that's awesome, Micah." West interrupted her train of thought when he stalked off towards the door and waited for her expectantly. "Have a good time then."

"What's up?" she asked once she had met West out of everyone else's hearing range.

"I told you we needed to have a talk."

"If this is about what happened to Belladonna Graves, I don't need to hear it. I already feel guilty enough."

"This isn't about her, Claire. It's about _you,_ and how reckless you're getting." She sighed heavily and rolled her eyes dismissively as if she had already heard everything he was about to say and were prepared to disregard each word. "Claire, I don't know what's gotten into you, but this has to stop. Last year when we started working here it wasn't a big deal when you would take a few extra bullets because you think it's your job to keep the rest of us safe and I get that. But you're not…" He bit his lower lip in frustration, attempting to find the right way to phrase his point. "You're running into dangerous situations ahead of the team. You're ignoring regulations. You're diving out of airplanes with the _intent_ to become a human pancake. I swear to God it's like you're really trying to get yourself killed."

"West, I _can't_ die. _Ever_."

"Maybe you can't _die_, but you can be _broken_, Claire. What happens when you pull one of your stupid little stunts and we can't find your body or get it back. What happens when you run head first into somebody that can create vortexes that you can disappear into forever? Or even somebody with terrakinesis that can bury you so damn deep underground that you'd never get out. There are worse things than dying, Claire, and you need to get that through your head before something _does_ happen. Either to you, or to one of your teammates because it's not just yourself that you're putting at risk when you do stuff like that."

That was a harsh blow. "I'm sorry," she whispered through a tightening throat. "I just… I can't _feel_ anything anymore, West. It's like it started out with the pain, but now it's getting worse. And the only way I _can _feel something is to…"

"Hey," he wiped away a tear that had splashed below her lash line, "it's going to be okay, Claire."

"How can you say that? How can you say that it's all going to be okay when you don't know what it's like? There's something missing and I can't find it! I'm _empty_."

"You don't have to be. You don't have to do it alone anymore." She looked up into a pair of expressive brown eyes that were soft but burning underneath - molten. Claire couldn't logically explain her own actions at that moment, but something that had been repressed for far too long began to emerge. Her hands reached to grab him by the back of the neck, forcing his face downward so their lips could meet while her fingers tangled in his hair.

West instinctively took her by hips, pressing their bodies closer together and maneuvering her back up against the wall. Hands roamed freely and their kisses grew frantic. Whatever it was that Claire felt missing within herself, she touched when she closed her eyes. Flashes of deeply calculating brown eyes, the scrapes of a stubbled chin, heavy pants at her neck, and the roll of her name off of heated lips surged through her, electric, magnetic. She needed more. Claire bit savagely at the mouth and neck before her, ignoring the whines of protest. She rolled her body around and forced him back into the wall where she had been, failing to notice the sound of a dull crack accompanying the motion.

"_Ah_," West hissed in pain, "Claire, not so rough."

Her nails viciously dug into the skin of his arms and back drawing rivulets of blood, and her tightening grasp left welling bruises in its wake. "Claire," he panted when lips left to trail down his neck, "not so rough."

She wasn't listening. Claire was lost to a cerebral replay of past events and unaware of such actions that did not belong to the forgotten reality. "Tell me you want me."

"Claire…"

"Hey guys," Alex started through the door ,"we gotta - oh jeez, get a room!" Claire was momentarily confused by the interruption but quickly came back to their present reality.

"Claire and West, sitting in a tree," Zach teased as he followed Alex down the hall. "K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

"Real funny guys. You're _hysterical_," he called after them. "Come on. We've still got to track down Ivy Connors before we head out to your parents' place for dinner."

As soon as the others had gone on their way Micah turned back to the bank of monitors and placed his hand on one of the screens. His eyes fluttered slightly as he communicated with the network of machinery, flipping through mission files at speeds no other human being could mentally tolerate. Finding a specific one that gave him pause, he quickly sent out an encrypted message to a certain contact that the Department would not appreciate him slipping classified information to.

_G.G. - Agents coming for the girl. Get her to London A.S.A.P. - Rebel_

**To be continued...**


	9. The Ends of the Earth Aren't Far Enough

**8**

**The Ends of the Earth Aren't Far Enough**

* * *

><p><em>I traveled to the ends of the Earth to escape her. To protect her. To keep her safe. And it still wasn't far enough.<em>

Sylar knelt down to take a handful of the dirt that covered the floor of the gladiatorial pit. He took his precious time running the coarse grains over the skin of his palms, feeling the grit that held sweat at bay sink beneath his fingernails. When he looked back up Claire was still waiting for him. Her unnaturally dark locks drifted listlessly around her deathly pale cheeks accentuating the bruise-like shadows within the sleepless hollows of her eyes. "You abandoned me," came her words softer than a whisper.

"I saved the world. I saved _you_." _Save the cheerleader, save the world. Isn't that what they were always going on about? _"And what does it matter now? You forgot about me." The sands slipped through his fingers and he tightened his grasp. But like time moving in an hourglass, the more desperately he tried to hold on, the more he lost control.

"I never forgot you. Not really." Sylar dropped his gaze to his feet where the ground crunched lightly when his weight shifted having been transformed into a spidering web of shining glass. Crowds of spectators peered over the walls of the arena observing in silence. Noah, Matt, Luke, Edgar, Peter… He could identify everyone of importance in their lives present among the eerie throng. All watching. Waiting. The slightest of actions had the potential to throw the couple's volatile balance over the edge of one precipice or another, potentially bringing the fate of the world with them. Miranda appeared at Hiro's side on the railing, producing the Kensei's sword and allowing the weapon to drop into the pit between them so that the blade was driven into the glass with its leather bound handle waving the _Godsend_ symbol at him antagonistically.

"And now you're going to kill me, Gabriel."

"How did we come to this?"

"We were always going to end up here." Claire tilted her head to the side with a sad little smile lingering on her lips. "Every hero needs a villain. Every beginning needs an end. And every prophecy needs to be fulfilled." She sauntered over to the katana and withdrew it from its earthen sheath. "Tell me one more time."

"Tell me you love me," he countered.

Claire's smile brightened a touch, finding amusement in his stubborn denial of her request. She crossed the distance separating them at a lazily slow pace and reached up to caress the side of his face softly before burying the sword hilt deep in his chest. Reflexively, Sylar encased her throat within his violent clutches giving her a healthy squeeze. The two immortals were locked steadfast in their gazes so much so that he failed to notice when her free hand clasped his, bringing the bloodied palm to rest over her stomach.

_Can you feel that?_

_Thump, thump… Thump, thump… _The sound of a faint heartbeat filled his ears like the flapping of butterfly wings.

Sylar bolted upright in his bed. Sheets tangled around his midsection so that they constricted his chest, and a thin sheen of perspiration dampened his face. He pulled his hands up to look at the palms where he could still feel a faint fluttering sensation only to find one of them still firmly clinging to warm flesh. Startled, he immediately released his grip on Elizabeth's neck so that the girl could be free to sputter for air.

"I'm sorry," he apologized in a rush. "Are you okay?" She flinched away from his touch when his fingers came to inspect the abused skin which had already begun to swell with dark purple bruising. Sylar summoned the palm of her hand into his own where he telekinetically slit the tender muscle there with little finesse, ignoring her whimper of pain. He went on to make a similar cut on his own hand and held the bloody wounds together so that his regenerative ability could heal the damage he had accidentally caused. The sight of his chosen companion's contusion fading into nonexistence, while pleasing, also served as a painful reminder of the woman perpetually haunting his darkest thoughts.

_When did I start understanding Angela? Or maybe it was Peter…_

* * *

><p>"Coms check, one. Check. Check."<p>

"Reading you loud and clear."

Claire nodded to their pilot in the affirmative before turning to her teammate for consult. "Good. How's it looking, Mel?"

Agent Waters's eyes roamed aimlessly for a moment behind the protection of her blindfold searching for any potential problems in the near future. "I see…"

"What, Mel?" Kyle glanced up from loading his pistol, eyebrows knitted into a fretful expression.

"A raven… and darkness. Just darkness."

"Is something blocking you?" As useful as the pre-cog was, O'Keefe had always been the one to take her the most seriously as though her timeless eyes were essential to seeing a picture much bigger than simple parts to a whole. "Zach, do we have any reports of the Haitian or someone with the same ability in this area?"

"Nope."

"Are you sure?"

He popped the sucker out of the corner of his mouth in annoyance and pulled up a side screen on his lap top, connecting directly to Micah Sanders back at the D.S.R.E.C. "Hey Micah, Kyle doesn't believe that I know how to read ability registration logs. Tell him the Haitian isn't out here so we can finish this and get to dinner."

"Somebody's ready for meatloaf," Alex taunted from his reclined position in the back of the Department helicopter.

"Sorry, guys. I don't see anyone like that in the Singapore area." Micah's visage flickered on the computer for a split second and he pulled his hand away from the monitor with a sharp hiss. "Ouch." Claire broke her concentration from double checking the squad's gear to quirk a questioning brow at the lap top. "Static interference," Micah grumbled over sucking on the fingers that had been painfully shocked. "That's weird." They watched the technopath turn away from the bank of screens, swiveling in his chair to reach under his desk for a bit of wire jiggling. "Molly's connection just went out. She couldn't see anything out there either though so you should be in the clear."

"Or that's what we're supposed to think," Claire mumbled under her breath.

"Not the Sylar thing _again_," Alex groaned.

Kyle perked up at the mentioning of the top tier target, and Micah rolled his eyes, planting his chin in the palm of his hand with a blatantly bored sigh. "Pull up my office computer, Zach." He let out a puff of air from between his lips but followed the order, dragging Micah's window over to side so that he could pull up the line to Claire's records. She leaned over his shoulder to punch in the password and put a neatly detailed collection of maps on the screen.

"_Look_," she jabbed at the screen. "I've kept track of every possible I.A. kill in the world for the last year, and then filled in the blanks with old Company records." Bright red dots were scattered about all of the six occupied continents with two noticeably empty areas. "The only places that there hasn't been a case since 2006 are around the Paris metropolitan area and Singapore. Obviously Sylar isn't going to kill anybody where he'll run into Peter, and he's too smart to start stacking up the bodies in his own backyard."

"You finally found him," Kyle smirked proudly, giving Claire a congratulatory slap on the back.

"I think so," she agreed grimly.

"Believe it or not, not every problem in the world is Sylar's fault, Claire," Alex moaned, stretching out his legs so that he could rest his feet on the back of O'Keefe's chair, who immediately turned around to smack them off again in annoyance.

"Talking about me again?" West grinned as he dropped into the open door from the air outside.

"_Sylar_," Zach and Alex both groaned simultaneously. West eyed the open display of maps on Zach's computer and shared a briefly tense look with Micah. Kyle kept his mouth shut about the silent transaction, but didn't miss a second of knowing he was out of the loop about something important.

* * *

><p>"Do you think she'll catch him this time?" Molly asked once Micah had gotten their connection back.<p>

"I don't know." He chewed on his lip anxiously. "She's getting really close though."

She flipped her hair over her shoulder and pushed another pin into the atlas that was spread out on her bed in front of the computer. "Yeah she is." Molly held out her map so that he could see two pins resting directly beside one another in the spot marking Singapore. "And he's not moving. Did you text him again yet?"

"Three times. He's not answering."

They both let out a long sigh together. Sheepishly, Molly fiddled with the corner of her atlas's pages before glancing up into the monitor. "Is it bad that I still kind of want him to be caught?"

"No." Micah gave her a reassuring if not somewhat shy smile. He very well understood his friend's reservations about helping the same man that had brutally murdered her parents. "I'm not gonna try to tell you that he's some kind of great guy, or that he's just misunderstood. I mean - like Sylar did save my life that one time, and we do kind of need him in Rebel -"

"But he's still a giant asshole."

He let out a bubble of immature laughter for her candid verbal abuse. "Pretty much."

"I hope he's worth all this," she sighed. Crinkles of worry for matters far beyond their age's experience creased the corners of her eyes. "Micah, if the Department ever figures out that you're helping them from the inside… I don't even want to think about what they'll do to you."

"Don't worry," he earnestly attempted to console her fears while keeping his own concerns masked. "I'm being careful. We all are." It was true that with his natural ability for controlling even the most intricate of internal processes within the facility's database that none of their most highly prized "super" computers were a match for him or his knack for encryption. With a simple thought he could wipe any trace of information from existence completely. But should he ever miss a single detail, or overlook the slightest of communications in the vast array of networks that the Department was charged with monitoring; if any one of the Rebel members should ever say the wrong word to the wrong person they would discover his duplicity. Once the agents had found him out, Micah would be shuffled through the extensive lines of paperwork to be turned over and sifted until his files eventually reached an industrial shredding machine that would remove any and all history of his ever living from the Earth. For his treason he would be ushered down the deepest of the leviathan's rabbit holes never to be seen or heard from again. He would be powerless to stop it.

And yet, not even the risk of his own beloved technology betraying him rated the highest. Micah had had to fully infiltrate the organization, bringing himself to reside in the belly of the beast because after the last year's overhaul all systems had been internalized. The destruction of the Department's original mainframe had lead to regulations mandating the "jar" atmosphere. There were absolutely no electrical based connections between the facility and the outside world anymore. All power within the building was derived from their own nuclear generator, tightly quarantined in a containment area deep in the bowels of the architecture, and surrounded by advanced security measures that could easily rival that of combat oriented silos. All phone lines had been set up on their own network housed within the building, and any satellite based communications for field agents were done so solely through random access coding via synchronized chipping technology that he could only classify as being futuristic.

Being face to face with his closest adversaries on a daily basis as a double agent was exceedingly more dangerous than Micah would ever let on. As a priority systems analyst he was under constant scrutiny in order to maintain his security clearance. His every move both inside and out of the Department walls were constantly monitored, and it took every ounce of his concentration to keep his tracks carefully covered. And all this was done while keeping a smile on his face and regulation dedication in his voice lest any of his coworkers catch on and report suspicious activity.

"Micah?"

"Yeah?"

A long pause passed before Molly looked up from fidgeting with her bed spread to peer directly into her lap top's camera eye. "When all of this over… You know, when we don't have to pretend about it anymore… If you ever wanted to go out, like on a real date or anything, that would be cool with me."

"Really?" The heated blush rising in his cheeks was sure to match the intensity of his faux girlfriend's as he tried to make sense of what she had just said. Molly shot him a shy smile over a bitten bottom lip and he knew that he had understood her intentions correctly. "Cool."

* * *

><p><em>"<em>You were having a nightmare." Sylar's shoulders tensed, muscles coiling tightly at the base of his neck for the voice he'd grown to loathe.

"Go away." Elizabeth flinched with his irritable tone. "_Not_ _you_," he commanded her.

"Poor girl, she was just trying to wake you and," Elle rolled her way onto the corner of the bed beside him, "almost got broken for it. You really should take better care of your toys."

"Claire is _not_ a toy," he growled. Sylar flopped off the bed and tugged a shirt on doing his best to ignore the irritating blonde figment that followed him into the kitchen. He cracked his fridge open to scope what was available for consumption but found nothing that appeared appetizing.

"You know it's not food that you're hungry for," Elle chided, once more at his side. His cell phone bleeped at him from the counter signaling that its battery was low. Reaching for the abused devise with its scratched up silver surface, he noticed that there were four new text messages to be read, but in the act of opening one the phone decided to die.

"Figures," he grumbled under his breath, tapping the phone in the palm of his hand as if he really expected that to work.

"We should go back to the ring tonight."

"I was just there. I don't need to go back yet." Sylar tossed his way through a drawer in search of the phone's charger, shaking Elle off as he went when her visage attempted to rest her head on his arm.

"But you never know what abilities might be out there," she pouted. "All just waiting for you to come along… _Ripe_ for the taking." The _hunger_ announced its intrigue for the prospect, curling in his gut for satiation.

Being allowed to roam freely for the past year and collect new powers at will hadn't been enough. All of his time spent from when he and Peter had escaped the wall up until a few months after leaving the Department, and subsequently Claire behind, repressing his instinctual need to become more complete by the adaptation of evolved DNA into his own system had caused his addiction to flare irrevocably. He had thus far restrained himself honorably around his work with Rebel's forces and clients, but in the absence of a solid focus to train his desires on, the will power needed to fight his internal drive was rapidly waning. The gladiatorial pit had offered some refuge in giving him access to abilities without resorting to the act of murder. Unfortunately he knew that it was only a matter of time before those resources dried up. His first taste of a new ability taken by force would unleash a more fierce blood frenzy within him than ever before. Sylar wasn't even sure that he would be capable of turning back again should the reigns fall completely free.

"I said no!" His clenched fist struck the countertop leaving a deep crack in its surface from his aggravation.

"Someone's got an itch to scratch," she sing-songed. "You know you only start to lose control like this when you need your fix." He shot a dark glare that had she not already been dead would have communicated his want for her immediate passing.

"I can't go back yet," he ground out. "We have to make this last as long as we can."

"Pookie, if you don't take care of this soon you know what will happen." Elle came to loop her arms around his waist and dropped her chin onto his chest so her face tilted upward with the full force of her pouting eyes looking at him. "If you go too long, living in this neighborhood, or if you have to track somebody… You wouldn't want the wrong person to get hurt, would you?"

"Are you leaving again?" Elizabeth called attention to herself from the doorway where she had been watching his seemingly one-sided conversation curiously. Sylar looked up at her from plugging in his phone to charge and sighed. It was moments like that where her crestfallen pout could never be authentic giving him an unwelcome period of clarity from the delusions that he had crafted for himself.

"Yes. I've got some business to take care of."

"Do I have to go back to the closet now?"

"No. It shouldn't take long." He commenced to pulling a wad of cash out of his wallet and tossed the bills onto the counter. "In case you need anything." Sylar slid the window open wondering why he couldn't make himself look directly at her. Or why he almost wished that she would disappear while he was gone. "Feed the bird," he tossed over his shoulder before taking off into the skies.

* * *

><p>Crowds of people drifted through the dirt packed streets of a small neighborhood on the fringes of Singapore warily watching every movement the agents made. The "special" quarter had sprung up nearly overnight in the wake of rising hostilities in the U.S. and its rapidly growing alliance of countries dedicated to bringing law to their evolved citizens. Since the attack on Kline Enterprises public cries for protection if not outright segregation had made a hard case for the assimilation of their kind. Gone were the days of the old racial tensions and in its place was an acidic competition for survival - "specials" vs. "civilians". The job market had grown fierce with employers fighting for their right to choose against hiring people with abilities for the sake of a safer working environment. Many upper class homeowner's associations and suburban districts had ostracized their evolved members to a point where they had more or less been ousted from their own homes. Add to it an alarming increase in violent crime against them, and thousands had found themselves fleeing for more welcoming establishments.<p>

In a few more years of development Claire thought the sector would actually make a nice place to live with its quaint housing units and open-air markets where "specials" could gather together freely and barter the use of their abilities. Where one person might have a knack for making plant life grow and need help building a home, another with enhanced strength or telekinesis could work construction in exchange for food. Speedsters zipped by doing delivery runs, and muscle mimics clambered up and down poles stringing lights and electrical wiring. Mystical pre-cogs sat around ornately carved tables telling fortunes while charmers lead herds of livestock about for trade. It was something of beauty to see people of every size, shape, color, and background coming together for a common cause.

Unfortunately the black armored team strolling down the walkway created an unwelcome blemish to the area's image. The crowds parted as easily as the sea for Moses amidst low whispers and pointed fingers so that the trespassers could go on about their business. Mothers pulled their children into their sides in fear of a coming altercation, and hagglers ceased their dealings to vanish into the shadows.

O'Keefe irritably slapped his PDA against his palm cursing under his breath. "Anyone else jammed up? I can't get a lock on anybody around here."

"It's not the handheld," Claire replied. "None of these people are registered."

Over the course of the last year the D.S.R.E.C. had set forth regulations for the registration of all people with evolved abilities; standards which were quickly being adopted by nations the world over. "Specials" were entered into their database with photographic, fingerprint, and DNA identification. Their profiles were completed by general testing analysis on their power, and a brief overview of personal information. It was put together in a way that was meant to be noninvasive, but kept field agents aware of what they were facing with real-time data relay capacity. With a simple camera click the PDAs that all of the Department's operatives came equipped could instantly bring up a "special's" profile and criminal record thanks to a new experimental photo recognition technology that Kline Enterprises had so graciously donated to the cause.

Naturally there were more than a few evolved citizens that had disputed the regulations for their kind. They had protested boisterously, screamed for the media, and in several cases staged riots over what was viewed as a violation of civic liberties and a right to privacy. The arguments were endless. "_Having an ability doesn't make you a criminal or a threat to society_." "_Civilians don't have to be tagged if they're not doing anything wrong. Why should we_?" "_How can we ever be expected to coexist peacefully when we're being persecuted by our own people_?" And the ever popular, "_What's next_?" Claire had heard them all time and time again. As the Department's top agent as well as a naturally selected spokesperson having been the cause of the "Great Revelation" by exposing their kind to the world, and her fascinating ability not withstanding, all eyes were being turned to her for leadership. In the face of mounting tensions and fear the pedestal that she was placed upon grew higher by the day.

"Why are we not arresting them then?" Kyle made to approach the first couple on his right only to be spun around again when Claire grabbed his arm to stop him. "What? They're breaking the law."

"This is a _refugee_ camp, Kyle. These people are here because they wanted to get away from all the violence. They're not a threat."

Hundreds of pairs of expectant eyes stared after her, recognizing who and what she was. _The Immortal_, they whispered to one another in hushed tones. She didn't even have to hear them to know what their lips were saying. "So?" he shrugged in a huff as if all the world existed within neatly laid out black and white parameters.

"_So_, sometimes we have to pick our battles." Claire gave him a rough but benevolent tug of his chest armor in the fashion of the soldier he was. Kyle reacted to the gesture by placing a hand on hers so that she couldn't immediately move away without touching him.

"You sound my old commander when you say that," he smiled at her. West cleared his throat noisily behind them and O'Keefe moved away. "She was more of a hard-ass though."

* * *

><p>Sylar touched down just inside of a small village in Haiti. Local residents largely steered clear of him, giving dirty glares all the while he stalked down the pathway into the center so that he clearly knew he wasn't a welcome visitor. "Where is he?" he asked addressing an older woman stirring embers about to keep a fire alive. She refused to look at him or acknowledge his existence, but he knew from her thoughts that she was well aware of his presence and what he wanted. <em>White devil<em>, he smirked to himself as he followed her around a grouping of homes.

Noah Bennet was reclining in a fold-out chair in the sand with a drink in one hand and a lightly smoking cigar in the other. He appeared to be asleep at first with his head rolled back to soak up the sun and his eyes closed so Sylar turned to dismiss his guide with the intention of sneaking up on the older man only to receive a cloud of caustic white powder in the face. He stumbled about blindly for a moment until his eyes watered away the burning sensation from whatever substance it was that the old woman had blown out of her hand at him. By the time that he could see clearly though the woman was gone, and he had somehow face-planted in the dirt with Bennet chuckling merrily at his expense.

"What was _that_?"

"She hexed you," Noah laughed again, taking a puff from his cigar. "It's a little spell to ward off evil spirits. You were out cold for almost five minutes there."

Sylar shook his head to clear the haze. Wanting nothing more than to see the gloating smirk wiped off of his counterpart's face he sat up, swallowing past the cottony dryness in his mouth, and leveled a look of serious intent on him. "Does _Claire_ know you're smoking those?"

Noah's grin instantly dropped. "No. And if you tell her I'll bury you alive in Voodoo dust."

"You don't tell anybody what happened here and your secret's safe with me."

"Deal." Bennet took one last puff of his smoke before extinguishing it in the sand. "There were two more kills this last month. One in Portugal, and another in Japan."

"Japan? That's Hiro's territory."

"Nakamura hasn't been home for months now. And neither has Masahashi for that matter. His wife is threatening divorce if they don't show up soon."

"Obviously they're not out to stop this. What do you think they're up to?"

"Nobody knows. They aren't talking to anybody, and they're staying off the grid."

Sylar shrugged it off. There were more important matters to attend to. "What abilities did he take this time?"

"Sonic burst and jumping."

He took a moment to mull over the information. "Jumping… How the hell did _Peter_ manage to get the drop on a jumper?" _That's something that I haven't even been able to do. _Not for lack of trying of course. Jumpers were just as slippery to catch as the previously mentioned time traveler though. The second you thought you may have had them in your grasp, they would simply evaporate out of the thin air, teleporting to another location instantaneously.

"He's getting more powerful everyday, Sylar. And it's becoming a serious problem for Rebel." That was an understatement. At first they had all turned their heads because it was their precious Peter and because the _hunger _wasn't something that he couldn't control, but every murder racked up the tally marks for a win on the other side. Any time an evolved citizen was killed it gave more ammunition to the Department for use against them, arguing that more laws and regulations would be put in place for the safety and well-being of all. It fed the media fire that "specials" couldn't even be trusted amongst their own kind let alone the rest of the human race. And besides that, "specials" were already vastly outnumbered by civilians so they desperately needed every body they could possibly persuade to join the cause.

"I need to know. In the event that we have take him down, can you stop him?"

_Maybe. I don't like the odds_.

_Nine Months Ago…_

_Sylar crouched down on the roof of the house next door silently watching from the shadows as Peter crept over the fence and up to the back door. He held his breath and forced his mind into a state of blankness as the other man paused to listen for a body count in the vicinity of the home. Satisfied that his intended was alone Peter used his telekinesis to turn the lock on the other side of the door and entered as stealthily as a burglar, which in some respects he had become._

_The ability thief could be seen moving through the windows into the living room where his victim sat with her feet in a small tub of warm water, curlers in her hair, as she watched the television. Anne Whitaker was a multiplier by nature and a nurse by trade. She used her gift to care for several patients at once in the local hospital allowing her to cover more ground during any given shift than her coworkers combined. _

'_Please make me stop. Please let her see that I'm here. Please… Please don't make me do this,' he could hear Peter internally pleading with himself as he closed the distance between them. The toe of his boot got caught up in the rug and he got his wish. Anne jumped up from her chair and split into five individual copies of herself which were all prepared to defend their lives._

"_Sloppy, Peter," he mumbled to himself. Petrelli may have had the drive to be predatory but lacked the mentality of a true stalker. Of course there was a time that Sylar had been less than smooth about it. When he had first started out on his path to gaining the powers of others he had made many of the same mistakes. What separated them though was that he had learned - quickly. Perhaps the clumsy approach had become Peter's way of manifesting the turmoil of it all. He _wanted_ to be found out. Wanted to give his victims a fighting chance. _

_Peter froze in his tracks physically attempting to restrain himself, but she never lost a beat. Anne's copies lunged for the invader, all kicking, screaming, and scratching away at him while the prime ran up the stairs to lock herself in her bedroom. Petrelli was momentarily dazed by the ferocity of the attack. In his surprise the weight of the women caused them all to topple over onto the floor. Sylar couldn't help but chuckle a bit at the sight of his former friend scurrying out from the pile only to be dragged back into the tussle by his ankles. A blast of fog announced the oncoming blister of supercooled air that would slow the opponents down before a cold snap froze them in place. Peter emerged again from the chaos with a dark fury in his eyes of a reignited _hunger_. He stunned the duplicates with a fierce shout of sound manipulation which made for an easy kill by one arched lightning bolt._

_Upstairs, the prime Anne had pulled her phone from the nightstand and curled beneath her bed to call for help. One by one more copies marched from her room and down the stairs in a seemingly endless parade of tired nurses only to be knocked back by the shove of invisible hands before having their necks broken in a blaze of speed. Eventually Peter made his way into her room. Sylar continued to watch, mildly nauseated by the brutality. He would have wondered if that was the way he appeared on the hunt but he already knew otherwise. Peter was little more than a savage beast when feeding time rolled around._

_The bed flipped over to expose Whitaker to the deranged serial killer that awaited her. She shrieked and pleaded for her life as she was pinned to the wall. Peter encroached on her personal space until the two were nearly nose to nose. He quirked his head at her, listing to the body's internal machinations, and blinked. For a brief moment the light of hope brought the hero back to the surface. "I'm sorry," he whispered to her. "I promise you won't feel a thing. It's all I can do for you."_

_And with that, Peter evaporated, but not before pressing his fingers to her temple and pushing thoughts for a deep sleep. Her head rolled around in the peace of slumber and the hunter set about his work._

The truth was that he had been watching over Peter for a long time, taking inventory of his abilities and comparing them. Sylar had known what he would be like under the influence of the ability having seen the results of it before. And he knew that it would only be a matter of time before they would be forced to face off. Whether it be over territory, power, or simple alpha superiority, there would only ever be room for one of their kind in the world at a time. Otherwise the balance between predator and prey would be disrupted; and nature, the same force that had created them in the first, was most decidedly against such a disturbance in the natural order of things.

He would never say that he regretted exacting his bit of vengeance by unleashing the _hunger_, but the Petrelli was never meant to carry such a burden. Simply put, he just wasn't built to withstand the force of it. While Sylar was naturally adapted to the aptitude and had learned to reign in his cravings so that he could make logical choices about which abilities to gain and which were better left alone, Peter was lost to the impulse. He slaughtered any and everything that he could manage to get his grubby little hands on. Unfortunately that made him quite the liability to Sylar especially given his propensity for dumb luck.

"Yes."

Bennet's eyebrows raised above the rims of his glasses critically. "You paused."

"I did _not_ pause."

"You never used to pause."

"I did not pause!" The two men glowered at one another like the bitter enemies that they used to be for a long moment. "I'm not going to lie. Peter has an edge over me in movement related abilities right now."

Noah leaned back in his chair and commenced to polishing the lenses of his glasses with the hem of his atrociously colorful Hawaiian shirt. Somehow the way he withdrew into the tedium of the task, refusing both further contact and a dismissal made him seem like a disappointed father figure. "I picked up a seismic shock ability and pyrokinesis the other night," he blurted out. Sylar could have slapped himself for the outburst. Why the hell would he ever care what Bennet thought of him? They hated each other. And that was the way it was supposed to be.

"Pyro. You've wanted that one for a long time." His tone was blatantly bored. Of course it would be. Neither of the newly acquired powers would have much of an effect on Peter let alone have a chance at stopping him should the need present itself. Sylar bit his tongue in an effort to keep himself from falling under the Company man's sway. He wouldn't give him the gratification. "But I know you've got something better up your sleeve."

Sylar remained perfectly silent, giving not even the slightest of facial twitches away as Noah replaced his glasses to peer down on him in a way that could make anyone feel small. "You've always made it a habit to never show all of your cards until you have to. Even when you were working for the Department I was never fooled into believing that you gave us full disclosure of all your abilities."

The standoff continued between them for another intensely long minute. "I've got one that can slow him down, and two that are guaranteed to stop him for good." Bennet gave him a Cheshire grin.

"I always knew that you were hiding the big guns behind your back. This might be the time to start using them."

* * *

><p>The team made the approach to the emerging housing complex that had been pinpointed as Ivy Connors' location. Following Claire's lead they brought their weapons to the ready and were about to step inside until Agent Waters uncharacteristically bumped into O'Keefe's back when he halted for his leader's signal. "Mel?" They all turned to see her twitching fingers drop her standard issue pistol into the dirt, shaking her head about and mumbling incoherently.<p>

"Mel, what's wrong?" Kyle holstered his own side arm to take her by the shoulders, bending slightly to gaze into eyes that he knew were not only covered but unable to see him anyways.

"I'm blind," she whispered in a panic.

"Kind of knew that…"

"No. I mean _I can't see_," she cried. "_Anything_. It's all dark." He looked back at Claire with unwavering faith that she would somehow hold all the answers. "I don't like the dark, Kyle. I'm scared."

"In this district… With all these "specials" around that we don't know, there's no telling who or what could be doing this to her." Claire chewed on the inside of her lip as she gazed about, thinking up another set of plans on the spot. "West," she barked, summoning her most commanding tone of voice knowing that the group would need her solid guidance amidst the rising sense of fear. "Take Waters back to the chopper and wait for us there. O'Keefe, you're coming with me." She waved at him to follow her.

West caught hold of her arm before she could make it across the threshold though. "Claire, you're going in blind here. We don't know what's waiting in there. I'm not leaving you."

"Rosen," she turned to face him head on, extending her short stature as far as she could to exert her dominance over the situation, "it's _my_ turn to pull rank here. This is my operation, and I'm not leaving here until it's done. Take Waters back to the chopper. Kyle and I can handle this just fine on our own."

"You're mostly a noncombatant anyways," O'Keefe piped up snidely.

"Shut up, Kyle!" Claire growled. She didn't wait around any longer to see if her orders would be followed.

The duo filed neatly through the complex lobby area, passing unhindered by the bewildered tenants lingering about and marched up a set of stair cases to the third floor. For what had initially appeared to be a low rent project the building was surprising well kempt on the inside. Wide palace windows allowed warm sunlight to filter in, brightening the place and giving it a comfortable ambiance. Rich hardwood floors added an elegant depth to the space as well as the lush mural designs painted on the wall by the local residents. It was obviously a living quarter for the more upscale refugees in the area.

"Hey, Bennet," Kyle called out from her behind. "You passed the place." Connors was reported to reside in 13B, but she felt inexplicably compelled to the C door. Her fingers brushed lightly over the dull silver knob as if it were somehow familiar. Claire pulled herself away and focused again on the task at hand.

"What do they want this chick so bad for anyway?"

"Her dossier claims that she's a code breaker. Technopath subclass," she explained under her breath. "Higher ups seem to think we've got a mole in the Department. They need her to root him out."

"Somebody from the Resistance?" Claire nodded.

"There's been too many 'specials' disappear right out from under us to be a coincidence. Someone is helping them with our mission files."

"Let's get her then," he grinned. "Fire in the hole!" O'Keefe kicked in the door by the weak spot near its lock and Claire marched in ahead with him filing in behind her back.

"Department -" her announcement died on her lips. The two agents found themselves with their guns drawn on a single mother with her young daughter at the kitchen table, plates of half-eaten lunch before them. Claire quickly holstered her pistol and gave Kyle a sharp elbow in the ribs to do the same. "We're looking for Ivy Connors."

"I'm Ivy," the little red haired girl timidly squeaked.

"Did you have any idea that she was a little kid?" he whispered directly into her ear so that the others wouldn't hear.

"No." Claire took a few steps forward, careful to be as unthreatening as possible which was no easy task in a full suit of black body armor. "We need you to come with us." She spoke softly, but the child skittered out of her chair and backed up to the wall in fear anyways. After escaping all the civil unrest back in the states Claire could understand how terrifying it would seem to her to be approached by the widely villainized Department in a place where she was supposed to be safe.

Ivy's mother knocked over her chair when she jumped up to come to the defense of her child. That was also an action that she could easily understand. Sandra would have done the same for her should the situations have been reversed. But there was a job to be done and national security potentially relied on its completion. Kyle compelled the woman to sit back down and remain quiet. And Claire didn't stop him.

"We're not going to hurt you," she promised. "We just need your help for a little while to find some bad guys, and then we'll bring you right back home to your mommy."

Claire took another step in the direction of the child only to be startled by a high-pitched scream. Ivy sprinted right past the agents and out the door. O'Keefe was hot on her heels following the shrieks as she peeled around the corner and down the hall, crashing into the unlocked door of the C apartment. She ran into the neighboring space just as Connors circled around the stand of a tall bird cage with a raven in it, successfully toppling the squawking menace over onto the floor where it rolled for a few feet to slam into the wall with black feathers flying every which way. A shadow of a woman darted out from a corner and vanished into another room before anyone could be sure that she had been there at all.

The child continued to squeal mercilessly as she was chased over the top of the couch, behind a set of bookcases, and finally caught when Kyle doubled back around the looping hallway leading to a luxurious looking bathroom. "Hey! Hey!" he tried to shout over her trilling calls for help. He grabbed her chin into the palm of his hand and jerked her face upward so that he could lock their eyes. "_Stop screaming_," he ordered her and the racket immediately ceased. O'Keefe took his time popping his abused ears in the welcomed state of silence until Ivy squirmed enough to bite his hand. He dropped her, shaking his marred hand around and muttering curses to which she seized the opportunity to take off running again. Swaths of copper red hair flared around the corner as she darted out the door and back down the hall with him stumbling after her.

During all the commotion Claire's attention had been taken hostage by a display of paintings in a far corner. She knelt to pick them up from where they had fallen when Kyle skidded into the stand and ran her fingers over the oiled likenesses, completely mesmerized by the images. It was herself, or rather, a dark brunette version of herself duking it out with none other than Sylar in a fierce battle to the death. In one painting she held a combat knife poised to strike at his throat, and in another they were colliding head on while the earth crumbled around them. And in a more frightening depiction was aired desert scenery in the setting sun with a blinding column of fire reaching its devastating arch into the sky, a sea of shining broken glass scattering outward from the blast.

She tugged herself out of the trance of aimless thoughts and half-forgotten memories to take further inspection of the home, except that while it may have been someone's place to live, it didn't seem to be a home. Other than the mysterious artwork by a fairly technical hand, the apartment was all together nondescript. There were no photographs, no knick knacks, no items of any personal pride or history. Nothing to mark who the inhabitant might be. Just endlessly spotless counters and shelves without a single brave speck of dust to be seen.

Elizabeth held her breath from behind the closet door, peeking just through the crack as a curious woman lumbered about the bedroom in heavy black boots and Department uniform. A braid of shock white hair fell down her back from beneath her tinted helmet, and if the girl hadn't been holding her breath before it would have caught in her throat in that moment. _Claire… The _real_ Claire…_

In the stillness of the apartment after the agents had vacated the premises, the raven continued to noisily carry on with its disturbance, flapping its wings and causing the cage to further rock and roll against the wall. At least until the bird's form began to grow too large to be contained by the circles of twined wire and burst apart. The change was slow at first but steadily picked up in pace. Talons took the shape of toes, legs elongated, wings twisted painfully into hands with fingers, and feathers fell away.

Luke took unimaginable pleasure in stretching out his every muscle until they burned painfully with the ache of disuse. He stared incredulously at the pinkish palms that he never thought he would see again and took in every facet of his surroundings. "Holy shit."

* * *

><p>A slight buzzing sensation was ringing in his brain like an angry hornet had somehow become trapped within his skull. The irritation increased the closer he came to his home, almost idly drifting down the dirt streets where everyone seemed to be chattering away at once in their native tongues, unabashedly flustered about some goings on that he had missed out on during his trip to visit Noah. Sylar winced a touch in pain, the irritation morphing into a full blown attack of thousands of needles stinging his being. He barely noticed where he was going and bumped into another person along the way. He stopped to apologize in the way of a socially conditioned response, his thoughts not being cohesive enough to suppress the action, but his sentiment fell away before it could even be spoken. The stranger than he had run into wore a long black cloak with a low hanging hood that obscured his face, but the hands that trailed out from the sleeves were a chalky pale hue boasting claw-like finger nails filed to a razor point. Sylar felt compelled to pull the hood back and reveal whatever creature it was that he was facing, but in its presence the weakness spread throughout his body so that he couldn't have lifted a limb were it a matter of life or death. Fortunately however, as the person in the cloak went about his own trek, meandering down the street where Sylar had come from the inexplicable sensations faded and finally disappeared altogether.<p>

_What the hell was that?_

**To be continued...**


	10. Welcome to the Thunderdome

**9**

**Welcome to the Thunderdome**

* * *

><p><em>December, 2012<em>

Puffs of fog condensed just in front of her face from where the warmth of her breath collided with the chilled air of her cell. A thermometer on the wall read a temperature of twenty degrees below zero beneath its frost cracked glass. Tendrils of ice snaked over nearly every surface but her bed; the piping leading to the toilet and sink had been flushed out to prevent damage, and the remains of her lunch continued to sit on its tray by the door frozen into food shaped ice cubes. And yet, she somehow managed to sweat.

Claire threw aside the white cotton sheets of her bed, soaked through with her perspiration. She could almost hear the angry hiss of the refrigerated air hitting her flushed skin as the steam clouded around her form. It was like hellfire running in her veins, burning her from the inside out until not even ash could be left behind. It permeated her every strangled heave for breath so that she imagined the delicate tissues of her lungs as regenerating bits of smoldering rice paper, her stomach a hungerless pit of acid set to boil, and her heart torched with relentless white-hot pokers. Her entire nervous system was a raging wildfire of sensation. Never before had she experienced such acute, blinding agony, or felt so completely alive. Every thread of her clothing, every coarse dimple in the cinderblock and grout of the walls, every caress of the air currents over her bare flesh were vividly real. Every hushed whisper in the halls came to her ears with inhuman clarity. Learning to discern her guard detail by only the vaguest of scents able to breech her cell had proven to be an amusing use of her excessively spare time. And every time she closed her eyes she could see _him_.

Claire rolled over, wrapping her arms around her pillow and moaned in her half-asleep dream state. Her fingers roamed over the jagged line of scar tissue that snaked down the scruff of his cheek to snag around his neck, the pockmarks on his shoulder from old bullet wounds, and the deep indentation running down his stomach from the bottom of his sternum. There were so many scars. Scars that only she would ever be allowed to see.

"I'll always come back for you," he would promise, his voice like velvet in her ear, the ghost touch of his lips against the skin sending a shiver down the length of her spine. Intense brown eyes burned into hers with the intensity of pure, unadulterated passion. Fierce. Feral. Vengeful. She knew that he wanted to destroy her. Rip her apart piece by piece. But even in their high stakes game of all or nothing he wasn't ready to see the end. Not yet.

Hands of iron strength held her pinned up against the wall as his mouth crashed down onto hers. Desert sands whipped around the outside of the house stripping away the peeling paint and splintered wood. Their place. No matter how many times they broke it apart or burnt it to the ground, the house would always be _their_ place. His body pressed hers roughly into the old paneling while plumes of flame consumed the ceiling. _I love you._

Claire bolted upright in her bed where the telltale fragrance of ozone clung to her nostrils. The familiar tingle at the back of her neck announced a most unwelcome visitor. She crossed over to the viewing port of her cell and wiped away the frost, the rest slowly melting to trickle down the pane and drip onto the floor in her fiery presence. Her contingent of guardsmen were warily watching a group of shadows pass silently down the darkened corridor while the rustling of chains scraped over tile. They passed by the rest of the block and headed directly for her. Suddenly the cell made up to join hers seemed to make a disturbing amount of sense with the intention of holding the prison ward's most anticipated guest uncovered.

The door to the other cell slid open and shut with a hiss of hydraulic function allowing Sylar entrance to the specifically renovated space. "_You_," she sneered at him contemptuously. He chose to remain silent but eyed her from head to toe, cautiously shadowing her every movement as if they were shoved into the same cage in expectations of a battle to the death. Claire moved to the glass adjoining their cells and pressed her palms against it so that he could witness the intensity of the heat radiating out of her by melting away the ice.

She watched him quirk his head to the side and raise an eyebrow, his eyes following a movement down his arm that only he detected. A faint trace of a smile curled in the corner of his mouth for whatever it was that he was looking at, but it immediately disappeared once his attention returned to her. "You did this to me!" Claire screamed at him with all of her fury. The two immortals charged at each other through the glass.

* * *

><p><em>September, 2012<em>

Luke eyed the wreckage of what used to be his bird cage distastefully. It was such a cruel thing to be trapped that way when he could still remember what it was like to fly; soaring through the air with his wings stretched out and the breeze fluttering his feathers, all fresh air and freedom. He could remember laughing, which at the time really came out as more of a guttural cawing sound, as his brother tried and tried again to catch him only to have him slip from his grasp every time. Unfortunately a day had come when he had gotten overly confident in his ability to give Sylar the slip. He had been lured in with food and false promises. As much of an eye as he had kept on Sylar whom waited a small distance away, the man had utilized an exceptional amount of patience and only crept forward in intervals too small and slow to discern until it was too late. Strangely it seemed that he could remember quite a bit of his life as a raven. He hadn't maintained all of his human mind in that form so some of it was confusing, like the affinity for shiny objects, but for the most part there was very little disturbance in the continuity of his thoughts. He could even remember Sylar's promises that he would find a way to "fix" him.

He gave the warped tangle of broken wires a disdainful kick and let out a sharp hiss when one of them punctured the skin on the bottom of his bare foot. A small droplet of bright red blood oozed from the wound… and didn't heal. Luke tugged his foot into his lap to look more closely waiting for the second that the regenerative ability he had stolen from Claire would kick in and close the hole. But it didn't.

"Damn." Luke snapped his fingers together for the spark of flame that would roast the remains of the offensive cage only to be disappointed again. "Oh, come on…" He held his palm out over the metal and concentrated on bringing the warm tingling sensation to his palm that would signal the activation of microwaves. Nothing. "Mother -"

_Looks like I need to find a cheerleader, _he thought to himself. Regaining all of his previous abilities would take time. Time, patience, and a lot of band-aids and burn cream unless he could get his regeneration back. There was no telling what his brother would do when he found out that he was back from his carrion affliction, or anyone else for that matter. Luke had created more than his fair share of enemies so it was promptly decided that healing would have to take precedence. Right after finding some pants. The impromptu shedding of feathers had left him standing in Sylar's living room completely in the buff and as humorous as he thought it would be to confront Claire that way, it also made him incredibly vulnerable to a well placed kick.

Luke wandered into the bedroom and tossed through a few drawers in his search for clothing. _There are some lines that not even I'm crossing, _he laughed internally as he skipped over the underwear selection to hit up his brother's socks. He hopped around for a moment tugging on the stolen pair of whites and adjusting them to fit his smaller feet. Throwing open the closet doors, he snatched a set of black jeans and a shirt. Something moving in the darkness caught his attention so he groped around for the string that would bring on the light. A frightened whimper came to his ears when he saw a small bottle blonde girl shrink away from the light, bringing her arm over her head to protect her eyes from the brightness.

"Uh…" _Wow, Sylar's even more freaky than I gave him credit for. _Luke used the clothes that he had found to cover himself once he remembered his modesty and extended a hand to the girl. "You can, um, come out. He's gone, and I won't say anything." She huddled farther into herself in the corner. _Whatever. _He shrugged his shoulders, grabbed a pair of boots that were resting next to her, and shut the door again.

Standing in front of the mirror, Luke sighed. Wearing Sylar's clothes made him look like a little kid trying to pull off his father's wardrobe. The sleeves of the shirt had to be rolled up so that his hands weren't swallowed in them as well as the legs of the jeans. And the boots. Forget about the boots. Bozo the clown didn't have anything on him that day. _One disaster at a time, _he grumbled internally. There were other, more important matters to attend to before addressing his issues with wardrobe malfunction. "Score," he cheered as he came back in to the kitchen and found the wad of money lying on the counter for anyone to take.

* * *

><p>"O'Keefe just reported in." Whitlocke glanced up from the set of schematics rolled out over her desk to take in the soldier hovering by the entryway. "He's got the girl. The team is on their way back now."<p>

"Good." She returned to her plans, running her fingers over layered lines of architectural engineering. A fretful crinkle appeared between her eyebrows as she worried her lower lip with her teeth. When her Sentinel took the disregard to his lingering presence as a dismissal and moved to leave the room Whitlocke flickered her gaze back to him. "Any signs of Sylar?"

"None reported. O'Keefe did relay that the Bennet girl believed him to be in the area though. She's been keeping score of the kills and tracking them just like you said she would. They all lead to Singapore."

"And Paris," she whispered to herself so that he wouldn't hear her. "Just like I knew they would." Coming from the future did make for an unfair advantage. As did the knowledge that Claire Bennet would forever be the key to locating and bringing about the untimely demise of the former watchmaker. Even if she didn't yet realize it for herself, but that would come soon enough. _Save the cheerleader, _fail_ to save the world._

"There it is," she mumbled under her breath, tapping her index finger on a specific planning detail. The Sentinel came to her side to see what she had discovered. Before them were the maps for the Department's prison ward with two additional sectors printed just off of the Level Five block. "Level Six," she smiled at him maliciously causing the scar running the length of her face to buckle in a dimple. "Lucius had these drawn up in preparation for the Miranda Project. Of course I've made a few modifications of my own… but the old man does have his uses."

"You're giving the cryo-tech to the Department?" He quirked a heavily laden brow at her in question. "That seems like a risky move, ma'am."

"Not just yet," she huffed. "I want that Rebel mole flushed out before this even leaves the paper. And there's still a matter of reinforcing the dock around the core. We don't want a repeat of the Manhattan incident… I think I want to internalize the air duct work as well with a vacuum chamber here," she pointed half-heartedly at a small area between the two primarily blocked out segments.

"Buried beneath one hundred feet of solid concrete and steel with no air; each one of the Grays neatly gift wrapped in their own containment battery…" Whitlocke's perpetually grim frown morphed into a sadistic grin of delusional joy. "Miranda couldn't escape it. Not without outside help anyways. And neither will Sylar or Peter." _Or Claire for that matter._

"Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"Speaking of the Manhattan incident…" The Sentinel chose to pick his words with extreme caution when the general pulled back from her work to cross her arms and level a glare in his direction. "We already have Sullivan contained, and Redhouse is on our list of targets."

"But?"

"I'm just curious to know what kind of contingency plans you have in place."

"In the event of another escape," she finished the thought for him. "That's why we'll be needing another vault for the formula here." Whitlocke indicated the secondary area beyond her proposed vacuum chamber in the schematics. "I want it away from the core this time. We won't be offering a repeat of our past mistakes." He fidgeted nervously for a moment which for a man of his hulking stature made quite a statement. "_What_?" she demanded sharply.

"You're _really_ going to do it this time. You're going to kill _Sylar_," he whispered incredulously.

"That's the plan." She drummed her fingers on the sheets of paper in a moment of deep contemplation before speaking again. "Redirect the others around Matt Parkman. I don't want Miranda following them to Sparrow. I doubt she'll move on Suresh until she doesn't have a choice, but keep an extra eye on him. And keep it off the grid. I don't want any legitimate Rebel leaks until we're ready to strike."

* * *

><p>Sylar strayed some feet from his apartment in the hall eyeing the door standing ajar as well as that of the Connors' across the way. Something akin to dread had begun pooling in the pit of his stomach the moment that he crossed the threshold of the complex and been accosted by a hauntingly familiar tingling at the base of his skull. Tuning into his abilities he found that everyone in the sector was buzzing with thoughts and fears about another Department presence in the area which was somewhat disconcerting seeing as how they had no jurisdiction or authority. But what was more disturbing was a resounding mental whisper that seemed to endlessly chant <em>the Immortal<em>. All doubt instantly fled from him. Claire was close by. _Very_ close by.

He nudged his door the rest of the way open with the toe of his boot and stepped inside, tensed for any sign of impending attack. What he found however was far worse. Black scuff marks skidded over the hardwood floors telling tales of a frantic chase to where the furniture was turned over. Luke's cage was a battered tangle of wires with no sign of the bird it should have contained in sight except for a few droplets of smeared blood. Drawers and cabinets had been tossed through and left strung about haphazardly. Amidst all of the wreckage though he felt himself compelled to the corner where his paintings were toppled over one another. A single brush of a finger against the canvas revealed a recent memory of a Department agent stooping over the portrait. She removed her glove to touch the dry colors with her bare skin and discarded her helmet for closer inspection leaving a strand of white hair to float to the floor.

"_We were always going to end up here," Claire whispered to the prophetic image. "Every beginning needs an end."_

Chills ran down his spine at the memory of her words accompanying the portrayal of her darkened self pressing the tip of a serrated combat knife to his throat as they were locked in fierce combat. He watched her drop the painting so that it clattered atop the rest of them on the floor and turn sharply to look back at the door. Something or someone had spooked her away from the scene. Sylar urgently set about touching everything in the vicinity in an attempt to figure out what it was that had caused her to feel so deeply unsettled; a sensation that he had shared and recalled from when he had bumped into the strange cloaked figure upon his return.

Nothing more was left to be seen of Claire though. Recovering mental flashes of Ivy scraping her knees on the floor while being chased by a lunatic agent stirred his sense of dread. They hadn't come for him. The Department had come for the child. Sylar had known that the girl was gifted with an ability, but what did they need it bad enough for to risk an international incident?

Sylar abandoned the mess of his own home and ran across the hall to the Connors' apartment. Ivy's mother sat cross-legged on the floor next to an overturned chair silently weeping. She looked up at him with fearful bloodshot eyes as he swept through the home looking for any residual traces of the agents only to come up empty handed.

"Did the team that took Ivy say anything about where they were going or what they needed your daughter for?" Her face screwed up painfully at the mentioning of the girl's name and more wracked sobs choked off her response. "I can find her a lot faster _with_ your help than without it." He couldn't understand why Ivy's mother simply continued to cry without making a sound. Sylar knelt down next to her and took hold of her chin so that he could study something in her eyes. Turning her head to one direction and then to the other pieces of information were filtered through him until he could make sense of what had happened.

'_You're under compulsion to stay here'_, he pushed into her thoughts. She jumped slightly at the unexpected invasion but nodded emphatically, undoubtedly happy to have discovered a way to communicate their needs. "And the idiot didn't come back to release you." Sylar rolled his eyes and sighed when she nodded again, wiping her tears away. "Damn it, Claire, you're getting sloppy."

'_Did the agents that took her say anything about what they were doing?' _he pushed again.

'_Only that they needed Ivy. The Immortal said something about needing her help to catch some bad people. She promised she would bring her back…'_

'_But nothing was mentioned about where they were going? Names? Times? Anything that could be useful?'_

'_No.' _Sylar's head dropped in frustration. There was only the smallest window of opportunity to recover the child before she would be transported to the States and then disappear down any number of the Department's rabbit holes where even he wouldn't have much of a chance at getting her back, and the trail was already turning from lukewarm to cold. More and more 'specials' were vanishing from existence to such circumstances on a near daily basis never to be seen or heard from again. All of the laws regarding people with abilities that had been born out of the disaster at Kline Enterprises that gave the Department leeway and loopholes allowing such illicit activities never should have existed. It was a folly that none of them could have predicted.

'_Wait!' _her thoughts screamed at him when he stood to walk away. _'Wait, wait, I remember something… The boy that took her - the Immortal called him Kyle. When he was leaving I heard him make a phone call. He asked for someone named… Whitaker? Whitmock?'_

'_Whitlocke?' _

'_Yes! Yes,' _the woman nodded.

"The new head of Kline." There was something undeniably shady about the most recent benefactor of the D.S.R.E.C. Sylar, like everyone else, had been meticulously following the international press. Kline Enterprises had taken some very bold steps into the limelight over the last year, becoming public proponents of stricter control and registration laws for evolved citizens in supposed prevention of further tragedy and donating highly sophisticated technology to the Department that not even the best of their meager Rebel forces had been able to make sense of or replicate. He himself had torn apart one of the PDA's that he had taken from an agent ignorantly attempting to apprehend him. Unfortunately the device had been directly connected to the vital monitoring systems within the revised body armor and became deactivated immediately upon its assigned carrier's death, refusing to divulge its secrets. The new technology was disturbingly advanced, far exceeding anything that they had seen before.

And yet, for all of the hype, hearing her name splattered all over anything to do with the Department, their movements, or lifting Claire up to near demigod status with the media, there wasn't a single person that could report ever meeting with the mysterious figure face to face. Whitlocke generally made a point of avoiding any form of contact with anyone unless she had no choice, except apparently for the lone agent working with Claire. Even then conferences with the board of directors or news outlets were done via audio communications with her voice distorted into a robotic tone for anonymity. Absolutely no photographic evidence regarding her existed. According to Rebel's inside intelligence there wasn't a scrap of identification for her to be found anywhere. It was as if she had just "poofed" as Edgar would say into existence the day she took surprise control of Kline Enterprises. Not even the company's own executives had had any clue about her or what her connection to Kline had been that he would hand over the reigns mere days before being found dead.

A death that Sylar was credited with. A death that shouldn't have been possible since the last time Sylar had seen the man he was sinking to the abyssal shelf in a chained storage locker.

There were only three things that anyone could be sure of when it came to Whitlocke. One: she clearly had something to do with dragging Kline's sorry ass back from the depths of hell with intimate knowledge about his tomb's location as well as how to finally end the ancient for good, which in itself made her an intimidating liability. Two: she didn't want to be identified or found, _ever_. Three: she had a real hard on for the Boogey Man.

Saturating all available surfaces with his mug shots and drowning the nightly news with informational hotlines for Sylar sightings was one thing. Swaying the pendulum of public opinion against him to the point that everyone's grandmother felt a need to bitch slap him at the crosswalk was another. Recklessly funneling her Department drones in his direction for the slaughter so that each death could be basked in heroic moments of silence; ratcheting up the rhetoric to a breaking point was a chilling change of tactic. If D.S.R.E.C. agents didn't eventually take him out, a swarming enraged mob might. He was entirely sure that he had never crossed paths with the woman or anyone that knew her, but she had managed to transform his life into a lethal game of chess where the pawns were a distraction from underhanded movements at the other end of the board. _Never thought I would miss Lucius, _he mused to himself. At least the ancient's motives were reasonably straightforward. He couldn't imagine what strings the new shadow hand was pulling or why.

"What's Ivy's ability?"

Her mother mentally stumbled about for an explanation to something that she clearly hadn't been able to understand for herself. '_She works on puzzles. Crosswords. Sudoku. She's always been able to figure out those kinds of things.'_

"Puzzles." _Why would Whitlocke herself be interested in a kid that can crack puzzles. Nobody in their right mind is going to ruin diplomacy for help on their Sunday paper crossword. _"What about computers? Machines? Can she do puzzles with them too?"

'_I forgot my pin number for the ATM once. She just put her hand on the screen and made it work somehow.'_

"Another technopath with a penchant for puzzles." _Oh hell. _A small light bulb burst into life somewhere over his head. The Department had caught onto Micah. Or at least the fact that a mole had infiltrated their operations. And if Ivy fell into their hands they could use her to break his encryptions and flush him out. Shreds of guilt for the part he had played in the events leading up to her capture aside, Sylar was responsible for saving the child for the sake of the entire rebellion. Micah Sanders had proved to be an invaluable lynchpin in their operations that they couldn't afford to lose.

A hesitant hand reached into his back pocket for a slim silver cell phone that he wasn't entirely sure why he continued to carry. He stared blankly at the screen for a moment before taking in a deep breath and approaching the sore subject head on. _Where are you?_ The text message disappeared into the ethereal network of wireless communications before he could think to stop himself. Somewhere within the city, his phone's identical twin chirped lightly with the signal of a new message.

* * *

><p>"I think we might have a problem."<p>

"Really? What could have _possibly_ given you that idea?" she snapped at her teammate with bitter sarcasm. Claire's hand hovered tenuously over her thigh holster, the leather strap unsnapped, and her trusty sidearm readily awaiting use in her defense. She couldn't get an accurate count on exactly how many hostiles the duo were facing. For every flushed face she met, another more furious one appeared in the gathering crowd.

O'Keefe let Ivy slowly slip from the hollow beneath his arm that he had been crudely carrying the kicking child within until her feet landed on the dirt road. He raised his free hand into the air in a placative gesture of surrender while keeping the other firmly gripped on the collar of her shirt to prevent another escape attempt.

"West?" he laughed nervously into his mic. "Hey, buddy, if you can hear me we could sure use an extraction right now." Static silence answered in the wake of rapidly mounting tension. A Department presence in the "special" quadrant had caused enough of a fearful reaction in the local denizens. The sight of the team forcefully dragging away one of their own kind, a child no less, without warrant or provocation had been enough to stir an incredibly angry uprising. They weren't about to let the agents take the kid, but they couldn't leave her behind either; and if they didn't figure a way out soon a full-blown riot would tear them all to pieces.

"Unit one to air," Claire breathed evenly, forcing herself to remain calm. Losing their wits would only further incite the impending blood frenzy and hasten the process as a sign of weakness. "Unit one to air, do you copy?" More static answered her call. "West? Mel? Zach? Alex? Anybody getting this?" Nothing. A cold shiver rattled her spine. Agent Waters should have been able to foresee something of that magnitude easily. Why wouldn't their teammates respond?

She nearly jumped out of her skin at the high pitched tone beeping from inside of her chest armor. Claire had to take a full minute to remember what device made that particular noise. Trembling fingers reached into the inner pocket to retrieve the phone that she wasn't even sure why she continued to carry when it had been a year since the last time a new message had been proudly announced.

"Now really isn't a good time to be texting, Claire," Kyle snapped back at her with an awkward laugh for the crowd surrounding them.

"Shut up." She held her breath when she read Sylar's question about her location and hastily replied the only way she could think of. _N TRBL GRY14_, she shot back out into the nether. Claire didn't know why the back of her brain told her to tell him or to give him the Department standard code for an outnumbered agent in distress, but she had the most inexplicable feeling that he would somehow understand. Not that it really mattered. The sensors in their body armor would be beaming back signals to the Department headquarters about their duress and alerting the need for back up. But any chance of sending an S.O.S. flare was a chance.

"How many can you compel?" she mumbled under her breath so that only her teammate would hear her.

"Uh." Kyle scanned the still building mass of foes all around them, crunching numbers as quickly as he was capable. "The most I've ever been able to do at once was twenty. Maybe. But they all have to be looking at me."

Claire released a malicious bubble of laughter that caught in her tightening throat. "Alright. You take the twenty on the right. I'll take the hundred or so on the left."

O'Keefe burst out into his own fit of hysterics briefly before turning to her with a wicked twinkle in his eye. He released his hold on Ivy and the girl didn't waste her opportunity, darting through the mob and out of sight. "This is _really_ going to hurt tomorrow." In perfect tandem that could only be achieved by experienced partnership the duo pulled their weaponry and released fire into the open air.

* * *

><p><em>In trouble, <em>Sylar read with bated breath as he stepped out into the street. _Code Gray 14. _On queue an intense burning stabbed through his chest. He squinted through the piercing pain to reach out into the minds wandering about him. Thoughts and memories filtered into him at random until he latched onto a select few still reliving their experience of seeing the black armored agents moving down the street. His knees almost buckled beneath him when another blow came raging across the cerebral connection between himself and Claire. Sylar bit his tongue and focused on the mental images of her and her partner walking with Ivy doing her best to fight her way out from under the man's arm. They had gone southward towards what he expected would be the departure point gaining unwelcome attention as they went. Following the course they had taken he lived through the ferocious hatred of his fellow residents as word spread about the abduction. Some had begun to trail after the agents, seeking an opportunity to halt their operations and gaining momentum as more members joined the pursuit.

Gun shots and snarled screams drifted to his heightened sense of hearing. There wasn't enough time to rely on stolen abilities or old fashioned tracking. Sylar turned into himself and concentrated on a means of location that he swore to himself he would never utilize again. A grunt of pain and a psychic tug later he found himself following the most surreal sensation imaginable. It was if he were being pulled in uncertain directions by an invisible rope tethering them together. _I'm coming, Claire._

* * *

><p>A stifled scream rang out into the hall. Whitlocke's Sentinel stopped short in his tracks and bolted back into her office just in time to catch her fall. Beads of sweat had broken out over her brow line as her battle-hardened face contorted in acute agony. He assisted her to a stationary position on the floor and looked on helplessly as she writhed in pain, clutching at her heart.<p>

"Not right," she mumbled in between waves of retching. Whitlocke fisted her guardian's uniform shirt and cried out. When a pause came to pass she looked up at him breathlessly, faithfully awaiting her orders. "Something's not right. I need -" Her hair flopped free of its braid and swung around to slap her in the face as another tortured scream ripped from her throat. "I need… Systems. Where - where are the systems?"

The soldier left her to gracelessly claw at the rug as he drew up a connection to the D.S.R.E.C. mainframe on her computer in interpretation of her request. Video surveillance showed him an empty systems analysis office and their security logs designated the staff as all being on leave for the night. He politely ignored the sputtering of blood from his commanding officer as the Sentinel flipped over to the lab where a group of frazzled men and women in white coats were zealously jotting down streams of sensory information from field agents.

"Unit 106 and 108 are both going into respiratory failure!" he heard one of the technicians shout in panic.

"107 is going into fatigue shock," another grumbled impatiently.

"Oh, my God…" All of the scientists turned their attention to the one on the end that was backing away from her desk with her hand covering her mouth. "101 just flatlined."

"What the hell is going on out there?" the head of the laboratory screamed. The First Response team was being decimated.

The Sentinel looked away from the disturbing video feed to where Whitlocke rested on the floor of her office. He crossed to her side seeing that she had come to an unsettling still. He gingerly felt for a pulse and placed an ear over her chest to take in the sound of death. Ten seconds passed by on his wrist watch before he positioned her flat on her back and tilted her chin upward. One skilled cycle of compressions was enough to force oxygen back into the general's lungs and her eyes shot open.

Dark energy crawled over her skin with a vengeance as she bolted upright, gasping for air. "It didn't happen like this." Whitlocke climbed to her feet, taking the arm of her comrade for support and breathed through her confusion. "This didn't happen before. What changed?"

"We triggered the butterfly effect, ma'am."

* * *

><p>"Let me see what we have here." A short, balding man with a robust figure pushed his way through the mob with the assistance of half a dozen menacing henchmen. O'Keefe crawled his way to the surface of the pool of bodies squirming to pin him down and tumbled to the ground in exhaustion. Space opened up around them as soothing sensations of calm flooded the crowd, quelling their pack mentality and allowing the squat man entrance to the circle. Kyle made to protest the gruff fisting of his hair as his face was pulled up to view but before he could find the energy reserves to do so he was forced back to the ground with a disappointed grumble.<p>

Wiping the stream of blood from his several times broken nose, he watched the entourage approach the area where he had seen Claire fall. "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" With the release of one of their own and their fury drained, the crowd began to dissipate giving further access to the odd little man's cronies. Two of them pulled a badly mangled Claire up from the dirt so that she could be shown off as some sort of victor's spoils. Pudgy fingers searched out the tattered rips in her body armor where skin could be seen and as her jaw clicked back into place she spat a wad of foamy blood at the perverse invader. One of the henchmen aimed a boot at her gut so that she doubled over with a grotesque crack of rib bone. The leader of the group made a show of daintily wiping away her crimson phlegm with a lace handkerchief before drawing back a fist and striking the side of her face with all of his might. He gripped her jaw tightly and studied the reformation of the arch under her eye intently as the sickly purple bruising gently faded away.

"I think we might have ourselves an 'immortal' here, boys." Booming laughter echoed out of his chest as he pulled away in mock terror. "You look a lot taller on the TV."

"Leave her alone," Kyle managed to gasp only to receive a hearty kick to the face that sent him sprawling unconscious.

"Get off of me!" Claire struggled against the men holding her in futility. She leveraged her weight in their arms to kick her feet at the man before her but he dodged the attack with a sick grin.

"Don't you worry little darling. You see, my name is Vick, and I run a very special club for people like you." Vick laughed again when another kick landed Claire's feet in the control of another one of his minions so that she was left suspended in the air by the men. "I promise you, we'll all be 'getting off' soon enough." Her shrieks filled the coming twilight as they stuffed a black hood over her head and toted Claire off to a waiting van.

* * *

><p>Ivy Connors snaked her way down the unfamiliar streets in search of something or someone that she recognized so that she could find her way home to her mother. Encroaching darkness made frightening shadows out of most of the figures around her though so that the faces looking down on her cast unfriendly expressions. She had never been allowed to roam about on her own before so if a close call with the crazy man in the black uniform hadn't been terrifying enough, being lost and alone in unknown territory had her paralyzed with fear.<p>

Ivy was trembling and on the verge of panicked tears when someone she knew caught her eye. The light from the dying sun made his face unclear, but she would know the lengthy gait in solidly black clothing anywhere. If only she could make him see or hear her, Sylar would surely take her back to her mother. She bumped into stranger after stranger in the flood of people returning to their homes, fighting against the current to reach him. She was just about to call his name when a man in a long black cloak unexpectedly stepped into her path.

The girl bounced off of the body and landed on her backside in the dirt. When she looked up into the emptiness of the hood, facial features obscured from view, a pale white hand with pointed fingernails reached out to take her hand.

* * *

><p>Kyle groaned for the pounding ache in his skull. His entire body felt like a brutal bruise and the blood caked on the torn remnants of his uniform had begun to dry and itch terribly. He rolled over in the dirt, coughing, and suffered a crack in his back that took his breath away when he tried to stand. Limping along the path of their last visitors' foot tracks he came to a stop about a city block away where tire marks ended the trail. Claire was nowhere to be found.<p>

"Unit seven to air, anybody read me?" As before there was only static to respond to his calls. "Unit seven to, oh fuck it. If anybody out there is listening, they took Claire. I don't even know where the hell I am and…" Kyle groped around for his PDA to get a line back to D.S.R.E.C. headquarters in New York. He was certain that a back up team was already on the way but he needed to brief somebody on the situation. Whitlocke was going to have his ass over the disaster, and… The PDA was gone. He retraced his steps back to the scene of the fight, feeling more lucky than ever just to be alive at the sight of the red, muddied dirt spanning several yards in diameter, but there weren't even broken fragments of the device to be found. It was just gone.

"Shit." Kyle threw his hands up in the air in frustration and instantly regretted the move when something in his shoulder gave an angry twinge. "Yup. She's going to kill me." If classified information found its way into the hands of unauthorized persons because he was stupid enough to lose the damn thing he would be tried for treason and mercilessly executed. Or, in a best case scenario, found guilty of gross negligence and endangering the lives of other personnel and sentenced to a hard ten years in Level Three.

"My life is fucking over," he continued to ramble to himself as he dragged his weary feet back to where the helicopter and the rest of the team should have been waiting for their return. On the bright side the Department chopper was indeed resting exactly where he remembered having left it. On the down side, the front view window was cracked with a chunky splattering of black-red blood on the inside.

He had lost his pistols in the brawl so Kyle was forced to settle for the combat knife strapped to his thigh. He slid the blade into his hand and tiptoed up to the open hatch, listening for any pin drop of life in the silence. Moving by the pilot's compartment, he could see that the driver was bent backwards in an awkward position over the controls with his standard issue weapon dropped from his hand. Spent casings were strewn about his feet. Bullet holes littered the interior of the aerial vehicle including one that had landed smack between the pilot's death glazed eyes.

Kyle steeled himself for what he would find in the passenger area and poked his head inside. West was face planted in the front row of seating. Melanie lay balled up in a corner behind him. And Alex was moaning quietly from where he hung half on and off of the back seats. A sigh of relief escaped him when he was able to find steady pulses in all of them.

"Mel?" Kyle shook her shoulder gently to wake her. "Mel, what happened here?" She sat up and felt for the blindfold that had fallen loose from her white eyes. He helped her to tie the protective cover once more, patiently giving her time and space to find the words that could describe such a catastrophe.

"Darkness."

West was the next to come around from his stupor. He spared a glance for the grisly scene in the cockpit and averted his disturbed eyes again, rubbing at the dark bruising that was setting in around his neck. "Where's Claire?" he rasped past his abused airway.

Kyle dropped his head in defeat letting the action answer for him rather than say the words "she's gone" aloud. Alex moaned noisily again before bringing himself to a sitting position and rubbing his foggy eyes. "What happened to Zach?"

* * *

><p>"You promise you'll take me home to my mommy if I do this?" The cloak's hood bounced up and down in a nod of solemn agreement. Ivy knew that the strange man was the kind of monster that her mother had warned her about. She should have screamed for help and tried to run away when he picked her up off the ground. Danger emanated out from his being in the same way that it did from Sylar and people naturally avoided him if possible. But deep down, in the same way, she knew that he wasn't a threat to her personally. So instead of doing what her mother had taught her to, she had talked to him. Had treated him like a real person instead of the nightmare figment he appeared to be, and found him to be kind. He was odd sure enough. Socially challenged even more so. But gentle in reciprocation of her own kindness.<p>

Ivy took the PDA from his grasp and pressed her hand to the screen. _Agent 0107, O'Keefe, Kyle R., First Response team of the Department of Safety and Regulation for Enhanced Citizens, New York, New York, Quadrant one, Section 1273, Level: Three, Class: Mental Suggestion, Serial Number: 1273-94730988-01, D.O.B. 08/12/2012, Prior Arrests: One result - 04/22/2028, Case Number: DETRT - MCHGN - 1298Q238572MZ, Assault with a Lethal Ability._ _Password:_

The child blinked her eyes a few times at the streaming lines of code flowing from the handheld. Numbers and corresponding letters filtered through her mind, breaking apart and recombining in alternating sequences too fast for any other mind to understand. Her companion hovered patiently over her shoulder, watching in amusement as she giggled and typed in a six digit password to the device. "Too easy. Give me another one, Xander."

* * *

><p>Meanwhile, back at D.S.R.E.C. headquarters, Micah was afraid to let his hand leave the bank of computer monitors before him. "Was that as close as it felt?" Molly's wide eyes looked at him through the camera lens with intense concern. He had barely noticed the code come through to relay video surveillance of the systems analysis department back to Kline Enterprises where either Whitlocke herself or one of her goons could have seen him chatting up the girl. In the last second he had circumvented the system so that the video feed looped from an earlier point in time where everyone had been on leave from the office.<p>

While internet dating in itself wasn't explicitly forbidden, doing it with the adopted daughter of a terrorist would raise more than a few questions that he wouldn't have legitimate answers for. Artificially expunging Mohinder Suresh's record as a member of the Rebel forces that had made the attack on Kline Enterprises the year before unfortunately wasn't a viable option so the doctor remained one of Interpol and the FBI's most wanted as well as a top tier target for the Department.

"Nah," he waved her off with an anxious smile. Micah would never let her know how the distraction she posed narrowly avoided ending both of their lives. But in the girl's defense it was a distraction that he deemed worthwhile. They would simply have to be a little more careful.

"Why would she go there?"

"Huh?" He was slightly reluctant to grant her all of his attention again but the confusion in her voice was worrisome.

"Claire. She's on the move in a bar called the _Slinky Serpent _and Sylar's right behind her." Molly held up her map so that Micah could see the push pins within closing distance of one another.

"That's one of the places where they take people like us to fight." Micah looked apprehensively from the screen he was touching to the phone with Sylar's number in it sitting just out of reach. He let go of his control on the Department's mainframe for the half a second it took to grab the phone, but in that blink of an eye all of their worlds came crumbling down.

A satellite link up to one of the agents' handhelds connected to the internal systems and the security clearance was high enough to grant full access to all the mission files. Molly's monitor converted to streaming data so that he could see endless lines of binary unlocking all of his encryptions faster than he could stop it. Micah would block one set of code just to have another sidestep him and steal another file. Data continued to leak all around him while he frantically attempted to plug all the holes in the proverbial dam but all of the screens changed to black. Letter by terrifying letter a singular message crawled across the bank of monitors for anyone with inside access to see.

_You've been a very, very bad boy, Micah Sanders._

* * *

><p>Dust particles floated in the air from the creaking rafters above. Synchronized stomping could be heard amidst the cacophony of chanting voices in various foreign languages, all cheering and jeering while muffled screams echoed in the background. Claire was reminded of the football games she had once taken pride in shaking her pom poms for the way the raucous rose to a fevered pitch whenever the spectators were driven wild by a great play. She highly doubted it was a friendly kind of sporting match taking place in the coliseum above though.<p>

Illegal combat matches between "specials" was something that she heard about from other agents at the Department but had never seen for herself. They had become quite a lucrative business for those willing to participate since the "Revelation". And it seemed that she was about to become a challenger, willing or not.

"So she's the real deal, huh?" one of the men standing outside of her holding pit questioned.

"Oh, yeah," he nodded to his counterpart, "she's a regen alright."

The one that had asked scoffed lightly. "Regens are boring. They don't make us any money. Just whine about how much it hurts to grow a new finger until somebody finally kills them."

"No, no man, you don't get it. She's not like the others. This is the _Immortal_."

"_The_ 'Immortal'?"

"As in she heals faster than all the others. Can _never_ die. Doesn't even feel pain. The _real_ 'Immortal' right out of the fucking D.S.R.E.C., man."

"Damn." He came close enough to wrap his fingers around the bars of her cage to take a closer look at her like she was an animal on exhibit at the zoo. "I thought she was supposed to be like seven feet tall or something. Doesn't look so scary to me."

_Come in here and untie me. I'll show you how scary I can be._

"Check it out for yourself if you don't believe me." The other man handed his friend a mallet and fumbled with the keys to unlock the cage. They came within a few feet of the chair she was bound to and stopped to make sure that she couldn't magically strangle them with her eyes before proceeding. The one with the mallet lingered around her hand for a long minute and then brought the blunt instrument down on the appendage with all of his might. He recoiled with a gag at the sound of pulverized bone and snapping tendons but his gaze never lost track of hers. Claire didn't even blink at the crushing.

"Holy shit, man. That is awesome!"

"I know, right? You can do anything you want to her and it doesn't matter. She just keeps coming back together."

"Vick don't care?"

"Nah, man. It's all good."

"You can't hurt me," Claire garbled through the gag tied around her mouth when the guy with the mallet obliterated her hand for a second time just to watch it reform.

"Maybe I can't _hurt_ you," he sneered at her, coming closer. His hand lazily drifted over the tears in her body shirt since they had taken care to remove her armor and came to rest on the inside of her thigh. "But I bet I can make you scream." She seized an opportunity that would have been lost had he not come into her personal space in such a way and grabbed a fistful of his groin with the very hand he had taken so much joy in breaking.

Her captor didn't think it was cute to harass her after he became the one to scream for help. His buddy snatched up the mallet that had been dropped and smashed in the side of her face to make her release him. While the one writhed on the floor screeching at her about the violence to his tender parts, the other watched in open amazement as the bone crunched back into proper placement on its own accord.

Above where Claire was being kept until her match arrived, Sylar wandered into the bar and headed for Vick's office. "Sylar, I was hoping you'd show tonight. We got something _real_ special for ya."

"I'm not looking for a fight tonight. Department agents were in the city today. I think one of them might be here. About this tall," he held his hand to roughly chest height in description. "Blonde, pretty, kind of obnoxious, excessively irritating. Have you seen her?"

"Huh, Department agents here? That's somethin' we don't hear about everyday. 'Sposed to be happenin' more an more though." Vick scratched his head in pretend thought. "Nope. Sorry. Haven't seen anybody like that 'round here. Plenty of women though if that's what you're interested in."

The force of the man's lie reverberated behind Sylar's eyes. "You know…" Elle whispered into his ear. "It wouldn't be the worst idea to take in a fight. If Claire is here you'll be able to see her from the ring." He shook her off his arm and ignored her in the presence of company. Like the _hunger_ lurking within though, once Elle had been roused there was no getting rid of her until the craving was sated.

"You sure you don't want a shot tonight? You look like you got a monkey on your back." Vick eyed him knowingly. As a former competitor in his youth he knew just how addictive power could be.

"You need to feed before you go after the kid anyways," Elle sung to him. "If you find her when you're still hungry, who knows what could happen?" Sylar shot her with a disgusted glare but silently acknowledged that the apparition had a logical point.

The guard detail took their precious time cutting the knots that bound her feet in preparation for the match. They left her hands tied up behind her back and the gag in her mouth as they lead her out of the cage and up a short flight of stairs where the noise of the crowd steadily grew louder with proximity. When they reached a second holding pit, she was able to see through the bars of the gate what awaited her. Beyond was a circular ring with a dirt floor. Concrete walls rose around the area to a height of what she guessed to be fifteen feet or so, fenced off at the top for the gambling spectators. Money rapidly exchanged hands while two muscle mimics dueled to the death below.

In the end one fighter was shown to be the superior at hand to hand combat and bested the other, bringing him to his knees. Claire tried to look away when the loser had his neck broken in penalty but the man that had accosted her earlier grabbed her roughly by the chin so that she had to watch. Workers scurried out from a side gate to retrieve the body and victor, giving the walls a shoddy hose down along the way.

"Welcome to the Thunderdome, bitch," he spat in her ear. "Two go in. Only one comes out." Scantily clad women waltzed around the outer edges of the gladiatorial pit flashing dry erase boards featuring the competitors for the upcoming battle and the new betting pool odds. _On the bright side, at least I'm only favored to lose by 1:5. _Claire swallowed thickly past the nerves jumping in her throat as an announcer picked up his microphone.

"We have a truly incredible match up tonight for our own main event. A champion defending his title against a new comer to the ring. Not just one, but _two_ terrors for your viewing pleasure. In this corner," he grandly waved a hand in her direction, signaling the men to finish untying her, "a most fearsome young warrior from across seas."

"See you after the match, princess," her guard sneered at her as the gate rose and she was rudely shoved out into the ring.

"A regen with no end. The saint of the States. The Immortal!" Claire blinked under the harsh lights, pulling the gag from her mouth as a round of vicious booing rained down on her. "And in this corner," the announcer droned on towards the other rising gate, "the man that haunts your nightmares. The bump in the night. The Boogey Man himself, Sylar!" The crowd burst into wild applause while random individuals held up signs of their own making proclaiming love for the monster. "Let's get ready to rumble!"

_What?_

**To be continued...**


	11. Enemy of My Enemy

**10**

**Enemy of My Enemy**

* * *

><p><em>Who are you?<em> Micah waited with his heart caught in his throat, adrenaline pounding away at his temples and his lungs burning from a lack of oxygen as the letters of the message he had typed into the system blinked away for a response.

_A friend, _scrawled across the bank of monitors to replace the prior lettering.

_If you were a friend you wouldn't be exposing me._ He tried again in futility to unlock the Department systems but all of his codes jammed in the works. Every move he made to fight the invasion pushed him farther away from control of the grid like struggling in quicksand.

_The enemy of my enemy is my friend._

The surveillance camera overseeing the office was due to swivel back his way at any second. Without the ability to tap directly into the video feed there would be no stopping the recording of his conversation with the entity responsible for the hacking. Micah had to find a way to wrap it up as quickly as possible without antagonizing them. _Who is your enemy?_

Xander Graves reclined backwards against the outer wall of the apartment complex where Ivy Connors was happily reuniting with her mother. What he really wanted to say was '_the world', _or even a more direct statement of '_Claire Bennet', _but he settled for an ambiguous, "_the Department."_

Micah saw the camera begin to pan back in his direction from the corner of his eye. _What do you want?_

_To join Rebel. _Xander watched in mild amusement as Sanders scrunched his eyes tightly shut when he knew the camera was in range to see everything transpiring. As a gesture of good faith though he tapped into the internal servers and fed them override coding for an emergency reboot. The core of operations would automatically be rerouted through back up generators so that the priority systems supporting field agents and controlling the prison ward never lost a second, but the external security portion of the mainframe would have approximately thirty seconds of black out time. There would be no digital recording left for review and Micah would remain safely hidden for the time being, or at least until his worth had run out. Xander recognized a valuable asset when he saw one and felt that it wouldn't be prudent to push the boy too far until necessary. In the mean time though, he had no qualms with using the security downtime to route back to Claire's office computer and install spyware as a precautionary measure. Remote viewing of his intended target would be most advantageous in the event of failure in his primary objective.

_Report the hacking attempt to cover your tracks. We'll be in touch. _Graves slid the PDA shut and pried the backing off to retrieve the sync chip. He held the valuable piece of micro technology up to the street light and grinned into the darkness of his hood before slipping it into his pocket. He struck the bottom of the handheld against the side of the building so that the bottom half of the device shattered into several parts. Picking them all back up he replaced the destroyed pieces in another pocket for transport. With any luck the Department would believe that the equipment was damaged during the fight and wouldn't be on the look out for any duplicate I.D. tags in the satellite linkup system. So long as they were caught unaware he could use the sync chip to gain remote access to the mainframe and possibly replicate his own portable for use on the move. Glancing down at his wrist watch he saw that time was very nearly running out for his selected bait. Xander pushed off into the night. He had another bit of business to attend to.

As the systems came back online the security alarms were triggered. Yellow lights flashed over the boy's face and he involuntarily released the breath that he had been holding. Armed guards for the sector filtered into the office, sweeping around the space for any sign of threat. When they sounded the all clear a man with broad shoulders and hulking stature that Micah recognized as being none other than the head of Kline Enterprises' second in command appeared. He gave him a calculating once over before stalking over to the bank of monitors and looking over the security reports that catalogued the incident.

"We received your distress signal, Mr. Sanders. Mrs. Whitlocke would like to have a word with you." Micah felt a wave of lightheaded vertigo roll over him as his forehead hit the desk with a resounding thump.

* * *

><p>Sylar slowly rose to his feet from where he had knelt to grab a handful of sand, brushing his palms together so that the coarse grains fell away. The deafening screams of the crowd dwindled to jumbled static in the background over the thundering of his own heart as their eyes met for the first time since Peter's wedding. Claire, and not just another dream figment or imaginary delusion, but the <em>real<em> Claire stood mere yards away at the opposite end of the ring. His opponent for the night's battle.

"I told you that you'd be able to see her from here," Elle laughed bitterly behind him. "So much for getting a _new_ ability."

There was a disturbing amount of discomfort to be felt from the unwelcome realization that he had begun to forget just how much he missed the way she could scowl at him; the downward slant of her brow line as she peered up at him, the little crinkle of worry between them, the stubborn 'I'm right and you're wrong' set of her mouth as her lips pursed into a thin frown. Every feature and capacity for expression remained perfectly imprinted upon his memories, but after six months of doing his best to will them away seeing her again so nearby and so intent on him was more than a little debilitating. He was the street junkie proudly sporting his sobriety only to be washed in his addiction all over again. Joy, sadness, comfort, hatred, longing and envy and pride and warmth… They all came crashing down around him at once, welling up in his throat and flipping his innards every direction but where they belonged. A cynical smirk hovered just below the surface for the thought of how she could always bring out the best and worst in him in equal portions just by being. She was the fire to his ice. The beauty to his beast, and the hero to his villain. The lover. The nemesis. His Claire.

All the rest of the world dissolved from that of the two immortals as they began their dance around life and death. Claire was first to take a step forward with her chin held high and revulsion in her eyes. "I should have known you'd be here." Like old times he was her bug to crush and she was the wild fury with whom he'd never quite mastered the art of conquering. Somewhere dark and deep he wished he never would.

Sylar studied her reaction as he shadowed her movements with a step of his own until they were in closing range of one another. "You're still blonde." _Unlike the dream I had about us meeting here…_

Stating the painfully obvious served to disrupt her guard. Claire pulled back slightly to quirk a cautiously curious brow at his blunder. "Yeah?" Thankfully the 'Duh. Why wouldn't I be?' went unspoken but she continued to level her gaze on him in a way that conveyed her views of his idiocy.

"It's nice." _Not like a painting of the future where you're out to kill me. Again._

"Hey! Snap out of it, Sherlock!" Elle stepped between them and took hold of his face to make him focus on her. "In case you haven't noticed, we're in a bit of a situation here so pop your googly eyes back in and get to work!"

"Claire, where's your team?"

"That's what I'd like to know," she responded as both sets of eyes rose to the spectators hanging around the outer edges of the pit.

"You could make a jump for it," Elle piped up. "Clear the fences and go for the door. But you know Vick keeps his boys on hand for runners like that. One, maybe two dozen. Armed. There's probably a few million tied up in bets on this fight so some of the high rollers may pose a collateral damage risk." Sylar's natural aptitude was working in double-time, crunching numbers at lightning speeds about how to get them both out with as little loss of life as possible. He could easily make mince meat out of anyone that stood in their way, but if events turned to that Claire would inevitably move to counterattack and she required the majority of his attention when irritated. Not to mention that carrying her out would severely impair his capacity for free action movement.

"Admit it, Pookie. The girl only slows you down." Sylar looked back at Claire but her focus was trained on something in the crowd. Vick could be seen wandering around talking to various high class gamblers, all pointing irritably in the fighters' directions and grumbling. The ring master nodded and came to the fence near his side.

"Are you two going to fight or what? We got paying customers up here and they're getting bored."

"Fu -" Claire practically growled at him in disapproval when Sylar snapped his fingers closed, effectively shutting her mouth for the time being.

Sylar crossed over to the side and hopped up onto the fence so that the two men could speak privately. "Vick, what is this?" He waved at Claire with an air of incredulity. "You want me to fight a little girl? I was expecting a real match. Something _special_."

His gut jiggled with the laugh that boomed from him. "Oh, she's something _special_ alright. That ain't no little girl. That's the _Immortal_." Claire crossed her arms in a huff, tapping her foot impatiently and shooting death glares at the meeting guys while spectators continued to shout obscenities at her and toss bits of garbage into the ring. "You, uh, looked like you knew who she was out there." Vick scrutinized his lack of response, drawing personal opinions that too closely paralleled the truth. "You don't have a history with this chick…?"

_Oh, if you only knew. _With a roll of his eyes Sylar jumped down from the fence and stalked back to Claire. If anyone in the underground ring system got an inkling that he had a personal history with their precious, dreaded "Immortal", or that he had worked along side her for the Department they would instantly liken him to her ranks. Forget about being invited back for another fight. He would be public enemy number one on both sides of the line. Simply inconvenient.

"Hit me." Claire didn't need to be told twice. She cocked back her fist and sent it on a collision course with his jaw that had him seeing stars for a second. He pushed his jaw back into place with a harsh click as he jumped onto the fence again. "Fine. I'll take the fight, but I want my share of the wins this time. If I win I get the body afterwards."

A sick grin spread across Vick's face from ear to ear as he thought over the implications of the proposal. "That's negotiable." His lie rippled to the very core of Sylar's being. He knew that Claire could just keep getting back up no matter what they did to her and he had no intention of releasing her. There was a lot of money to be made off of a fighter that couldn't be retired, let alone one that hundreds if not thousands would pay to fight or watch be mutilated repeatedly. But even if a victory got _him_ out of fighting her, he couldn't leave her behind. Some of the things that went on behind closed doors concerning the less than voluntary gladiators made their deaths in the ring look like a sweet release.

"There's only one way you're _both_ getting out of here." Elle's hands roamed over the planes of his shoulders to knead the tension away. "The girl has to die." Her words could chill to the bone, but he knew she was right. Putting Claire down after giving the fans a thrill would get them through the gates and beyond the bulk of the population. Afterwards it was a clear shot to the club covering the ring above and escape.

Claire didn't need him to tell her what the deal was. One look in his eyes and she knew what had to be done. "This is it then." Blue flames erupted in the palms of his hands causing her to bring up her boxing guard. "Let's make it look good." And then she had the audacity to smile for him.

Sylar ducked her first swing and found himself grinning like a mad man when she anticipated his avoidance and used it to sweep his legs out from under him. She placed another kick at his side but he grabbed her foot and hurled her to ground with him. He nearly got the upper hand when he gained the top position and held her hands pinned over her head. Claire however, had other ideas. She slipped a leg between his and rolled her weight for all she was worth allowing her to flip him again. Electricity jolted her in the side so that she fell over in a fit of seizing muscles.

"Seriously, Claire? What is this?" He telekinetically pulled her to her feet and made a show out of stretching her out so that the spectators could see the slash marks ripping down her arms and back like a mock crucifixion. "Use your shield."

"What shield?" Blood steadily dripped down her sides to pool on the already stained dirt of the coliseum floor while he held her aloft. Sylar ticked his head to the side, reading her when he detected no lie in her ignorance of the ability that he himself had granted her. Initially he had thought that perhaps the Haitian had somehow helped her to forget about what they had together, but as he dug deeper into her subconscious he discovered much more. The Haitian probably wouldn't have been able to take her memories for long because the scar tissues would have eventually healed. Instead, someone had formed a mental block around that part of her life not so unlike what Parkman could do. If Matt had done the dirty work there Sylar would have known about it long ago, which left Peter who wouldn't have stopped to consider her force field power. The ability itself was directly connected to her memories of him and so long as she was in the dark about their past, that power too was also out of commission.

"You're holding back." He spoke the words next to her ear so that she couldn't see the hurt lingering in his eyes before he swallowed the emotion.

"So are you." When he looked at her again there was something that could have been likened to curiosity in her expression. It was almost as if a long lost recollection were on the tip of her tongue but couldn't quite be completed. Everything that had been was so very close and so very far away at the same time.

A combat knife fell from the outer ring above the pit and stuck upright in the dirt near their feet. Cheers erupted from the crowd as well as a wolfish whistle from a greedily smiling Vick at the fence. Recognition flashed between them at the sight of the serrated blade. _We were always going to end up here._

Claire fell from her bonds. She caught him in a moment of surprise and landed a heavy hit to Sylar's abdomen. Not missing a beat, she cross-hooked his jaw and leapt for the weapon. He gave her a telekinetic yank backwards by the ankle and sent her reeling so that he could pursue the knife for himself. His fingers grazed the leather bound handle just as she landed on his back and gave his neck a hard wrench in the wrong direction. Flinging her over his shoulders, Sylar recovered in time to catch another angry flurry of attacks aimed at his face. He squinted past the sting of a broken nose and captured her by the throat, lifting her so that her toes dangled just above the earth. Sylar spit out a tooth onto the ring's floor and swiped his tongue over the oozing hole until he felt a replacement come into line with the others. Claire leveraged her weight and swung the steel toe of her boot into his shin so that he dropped her again. While he was busy hopping around on one foot and spewing cures, she dove for the knife and pried it free from the ground.

Twirling the blade around in the fingers of one hand, she used the other to wave a 'come hither' sign at him, smiling vindictively the whole way. Sylar lobbed a ball of blue flame in her direction that grazed by a sizzling cheek. The flesh reformed around the burn as quickly as it had been stripped away and she lunged forward with the knife primed for striking. He dodged her attack with a burst of speed and blurred to the other end of the ring where he stomped his foot on the ground to send a seismic shock ripping through the dirt. Claire was momentarily knocked from her feet but immediately bounced back on the power of muscles that couldn't feel the pain of strain. An arch of lightning served to lock up her joints but ultimately proved ineffective. Even with her tattered remains of clothing smoking around her from the damage, Claire charged head first into the fray.

She landed a sweeping strike that tore a gash in his cheek to mirror the burn that he had given her. Sylar switched tactics, buzzing around her at super speed and pummeling her with full strength from every direction until he could pin her hands behind her back and steal the blade away with a hard wrench of her shoulders. Claire reflexively grimaced when she popped her arms back into place. She twirled a roundhouse kick at his hand to knock the weapon out of play for a moment but was blown back from her target with a sonic shout.

"You're better than this, Claire," he said coming to loom over where she had fallen. _I taught you better than this. _"Forget about trying to hit _me_. Concentrate on stopping me from hitting _you_. Protecting yourself is _always_ the first priority. You're no good to anyone if you're too busy piecing yourself back together to do anything else."

Claire shot him an acidic scowl and jumped back to her feet with her guard up. Sylar feigned a jab in her direction and studied her shift to block the action. To keep up appearances he dropped her to her knees with a raking of telekinetic claws that stripped her hamstrings out. "Space your feet out like this," he whispered too low for anyone else to hear as he maneuvered her limbs with invisible hands in example. "Follow through completely with your hips and shoulders. From there, no one can move you, and you'll be able to strike with maximum force."

The pair could have been back in the D.S.R.E.C. training room sparring on their worn padding again as lost as they became to the mechanics of muscle memory. Excited cheering from the crowd fell on deaf ears and Vick's combat knife lay forgotten in the sands as they traded blow for fluid blow. Claire balanced a precarious jump kick to his chest for which he responded by giving her a mental nudge in the opposite direction. She twisted in the air to land on her feet again, exercising her capacity for regeneration in agility by dodging the lightning bolt that followed. Jab, hook, and undercut were blocked fist to fist as painless knuckles cracked and bled, spraying the first row of frantic fans with droplets of crimson life. And every connection of bare flesh to flesh brought with it clairsentient memories and emotion from Lydia's empathy.

Flashes of dark brown eyes and a vague interpretation of the scent of ozone snared behind his eyelids. The sense of security with fear in knowledge that there was always a presence at her back. Waking from a terrible dream that she couldn't quite remember; walking through the halls of the Department to knock on a specific office door and not knowing why or to whom it belonged; looking at pictures that somehow seemed incomplete, as if there should have been another person in them; and feeling more than knowing that something that used to be there had gone away. Hollowness.

A few screams echoed along the walls of the ring when a burst of flame went astray. Claire stumbled in the loose dirt of the coliseum floor and fell to her knees. Her hair had fallen free from the braid that she kept it in during field time and draped about her face, damp, dark, and lifeless with sweat. With her chest heaving she looked up for his approach in heated defeat. He should have finished her. Shouldn't have given in to that second's pause. Shouldn't have given heed to what could have been her last words.

"How do you make love stay?"

* * *

><p>Micah kept a stoic façade about himself, choosing to remain silent as he was escorted to Kline Enterprises and up to the top floor where he was set to meet with none other than Whitlocke herself. He held his arms aloft accordingly as guards wanded him over with metal detection equipment before he submitted to a thorough frisking. As they reached the inner sanctum, his personal guide stood in place for a retinal scan at the final security station, and then reached to place Micah's hand on a fingerprint scanning screen after registering him as a guest.<p>

"Welcome, Sanders, Micah," came the same robotic greeting that he heard every time he entered his office at the D.S.R.E.C. He found himself mildly surprised that his Department security clearance extended so far into the Kline building. If the Department was full of treacherous secrets, then that place was the brood mother of all evils, fueling the machine endlessly with prototype technology and funding that not even the highest ranks of the federal government could hope to get their hands on. And he was about to be face to face with the shadow hand that benefited them all.

"Wait here." Two guards remained on standby to wait patiently with him as Whitlocke's second disappeared behind a set of heavily reinforced double doors. He recognized some of the tech being used in the interlocking plates of steel as the kind used in various styles of panic rooms. If for any reason an alarm were to be set off in the building, or an incorrect code entered following the swiping of an ident card, or if a switch were to be triggered from the inside of the room itself, then the plates would lock together internally resulting in a vault entrance that nothing short of God, or perhaps Sylar were he truly motivated, would be able to open again until the switch were depressed by the hand that it was assigned to. Unfortunately, most of the system seemed to be based off of mechanics rather than electrical except for the switch circuitry which ran off of its own grid. Micah wouldn't be able to manipulate the fortress of solitude by himself should the need to strike ever occur. At that particular point in time though he was silently praying that he survived long enough to see again the persons that might make such a strike possible so that he could relay the information.

"Come in," he was ordered as the second in command poked his head out from one of the doors. Micah timidly stepped into the luxurious office space noting that the windows had been rebuilt to include bulletproof glass as well as steel shielding that could drop over them at a moment's notice for an added layer of protection against the outside world. Whitlocke certainly believed in coming prepared for anything and everything. He jumped a bit when the door behind him slid to a close with a reverberating trap sound that could be felt in the floorboards. It briefly came to him that the second was the only one allowed to see her because he may have been the only one strong enough to hold the door open for access.

"Hello, Mr. Sanders." Her voice floated back to him from behind the grand chair that was turned so that her visage would be completely obscured from view. She had also chosen to utilize the same scrambling device that exchanged her words for those of a monotone robot which came over the telecommunications system whenever she needed to speak with a Department officer personally. "Please, take a seat." In tandem with the semi-pleasant command, long whips of dark translucent energy snaked out from her chair to pull aside one of those resting in front of the elegant desk. He hesitated for a moment so that her second cleared his throat noisily, suggesting that he shouldn't be wasting time in doing as he was told. Micah swallowed hard and took the seat where the tentacles of energy lingered, feeling over the tops of the silky upholstery.

"Tell me what happened today in the systems analysis lab, Mr. Sanders."

"There was a hacking attempt." A full minute passed where nothing at all was said and he got the impression that he was supposed to further elaborate on the situation. "A, uh, outside source tried to, um, tap into the satellite network to access the mission file server. So I…" He was distracted by the second's intense scrutiny of him with every word. His heart felt ready to hammer its way free of his chest as he continued. "So I forced a manual shut down of the external mainframe to stop it."

"And flagged the operation per regulation code with appropriate reporting?"

"Uh… Yes?"

"Well done, Mr. Sanders." Micah allowed himself to breathe freely in relief. He wasn't out of the woods, but maybe he wasn't there to be busted just yet either. "Were you able to identify the source of the threat?"

"No, ma'am." He waited another moment in tense silence for any other questions that might be brought up.

"That's alright. We already know who he is." The chair started to turn around and he thought that he would be permitted the outside world's first glimpse at the Department's primary benefactor, but it stopped abruptly and all he caught view of was a heeled foot resting in the air from where her legs had been crossed. "His name is Xander Graves, and he's a potentially dangerous liability."

"How -?"

"He's the only one to have ever breached our systems before. At the time he was in the employ of… a _competing _organization. It is my understanding that his sister has recently passed due to a mission failure on the part of one of our Department staff. That event is going to lend him considerable ambition in attacking us again."

"What am I supposed to do?"

"He'll contact you again. Continue your correspondence." _Crap. _Micah's jaw dropped. He had been caught after all. The impulse to run stirred and she must have anticipated such a move because the tendrils of energy came to wrap around his wrists with crushing force, tying him down to the chair that he was sitting in. "Yes, I know about your conversation, Mr. Sanders. I am also aware of your past as Rebel and that you continue to act as a double agent for the Resistance. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself." Whitlocke turned her vocal scrambling device off and carefully placed it on the desk. Her second came to her side with a questioning look of concern but she waved him off. The chair turned all the way around revealing her scarred and battle-hardened face to the young technopath. An energy tendril covered his mouth before he could scream.

"I'm going to give you a very rare and unique opportunity. You have the option of choosing to not only save your own life, but those of your family. I understand that your grandmother and cousins are still living in New Orleans." Leaning forward over her desk, she tightened her grip around him as an example of what she could do until the bones in one of his wrists gave way with a sickening crunch. He writhed in silent agony, his legs flailing in the air as the second continued to look on without so much as a blink in reaction. "The first thing you're going to do is tell us _exactly _where all the other members of Rebel are hiding. You're going to inform us of every move Mr. Graves intends to make. And then, I think I'd like to make contact with Ms. Dawson. She has assets that are going to prove most useful to _our_ cause as well as providing a comfortable measure of insurance." The most sly of smiles broke her face in half for the thought of impending victory.

"There's a war on the horizon, Mr. Sanders. You don't have to be a member of the Resistance or Department to feel it in the air." Whitlocke pulled back and released the boy so that he could take a trembling breath. Her eyes rolled towards one of the windows where the setting sun glinted across the glass in brilliant streaks of orange, sadly remembering times past that the world around her had yet to see. "I have three months to keep two billion people from dying. And I'll do _anything_ to stop it." She turned away to approach the window, pressing her palms up to the glass and looking down at the sprawling city below. "Just remember, Mr. Sanders, that in the big picture a small handful of lives mean very little to me. If you betray me again, everyone you know and love becomes forfeit."

* * *

><p>"You don't." His words came out in a whisper so low that she may not have even heard them. "You let it go so that -" the rest of his explanation was cut off by the jagged inhalation he took when the forgotten blade was thrust deep into his abdomen with a harsh twist. Claire had hidden the weapon between her knees where she fell. She had never tripped. It was a lure, and a successful one at that. "So that it can have a better life without you," he grunted as she gave it another quarter turn.<p>

A disembodied hand came to close around her throat but her grip on the knife's handle never failed. "Tell me… where… your kill… spot is," she choked out. _Let me kill you. We can get out of here if one of us dies._

Sylar gave her a cruel smirk in response to her thoughts. Chants of "_finish her_" grew into a dull roar overhead. What captured his attention though were the subtle shafts of light emanating from the tips of the fingers resting against his chest. He was briefly tempted by the sight to disclose her requested information on how to shut him down. Perhaps if her ability continued to manifest again then she would stand a chance at getting out of the cursed place, but it was only a half-cocked chance. And even if she did manage escape, where would that leave him? It was a particularly impractical idea.

"Give the crowd what it wants," Elle whispered. "Finish her."

_And now you're going to kill me…_ He leant over to speak directly in her ear. "Don't get up."

Claire pulled back to study his features in confusion. He had to watch as her eyebrows knit together in pain and her mouth opened in a silent "_oh_" of surprise as her gaze dropped to take in the arm that protruded from her chest. Sylar gave her the slightest of nudges at the same time he yanked so that she fell in a rather dramatic Shakespearian way for the show. The cheers reverberating in the space thundered with enough force to shake dust free from the coliseum's ceiling when the Immortal collapsed into a lifeless heap and Sylar held her bleeding heart aloft for all to see.

He had to use his telekinesis to form a bubble of space in the gaping cavity where her heart had been to repress the automatic growth of a new one as well as the closing of the wound. The exit gate opened to allow the recovery team through along with a sadistically grinning Vick. "Congratulations, Sylar," he announced as he yanked the blade from his gut with little finesse, "you're still undefeated. And I'm richer than ever thanks to that. You're going to be quite the hero now." He sneered at the thought. The only people he would be thought of as a hero to for what he had done would be the same kind that the world needed Claire to police.

"Holy shit," one of his guardsman guffawed, kneeling down to inspect Claire's broken body. "You really killed her."

Vick himself also came to look at the still slowly trickling wound. His pudgy fingers probed along the bloody hole to check for any sign of healing. "I guess she wasn't so 'immortal' after all."

"Funny thing I learned about regens," Sylar noted nonchalantly, "they have a nerve point in the heart that shuts them down. Their ability is in the blood." His vision rippled slightly with the detection of his own lies. The ring master looked at him with a cautious skepticism for a moment but let it fall into a more forced smile.

Vick took Sylar's arm with pride and held it up in victory. "The Immortal is no more!" he shouted to the crowd eliciting more raucous cheering. The guardsmen took Claire's body in tow as they all left the pit. Outside, in the tunnels that lead up to the club covering the gambling scene, Sylar made a point to take the body from the men carrying her and released a portion of his hold so that she could begin repairing the damage that he had caused.

"What's this?" Vick quirked a brow at him, crossing his arms obstinately when they made to walk away.

"I'm taking my wins."

"Right." He pulled out an excessive amount of cash rolled tightly into a gaudy money clip. "American, right?"

"I'm taking the body. Just like we agreed."

"I believe that I said it was 'negotiable'. I'll give you your wins, Sylar, and much more. Cars, money, drinks, women…" Vick pulled back to study Sylar's rapidly waning patience, "or men if you prefer. Whatever I have is yours."

"All I need is right here," Sylar smirked, giving Claire's body a swat on the ass to cover the muscle twitch that signaled the first beat of a freshly regenerated heart.

Soothing, lethargic calm washed over him, draining his frustrations. "You can have any girl you want, Sylar. I'm sure we can find you some more… _lively_ ones. Even another fighter if that's what you like."

"I don't want another one. I want _this_ _one_." Sylar had to stop and internally marvel somewhat at the whining tone of his own voice. Under Vick's influence he was little more than Gabriel, the pathetic watchmaker all over again.

"Pookie." Elle leaned casually against his free arm, roaming her fingers up and down his chest dreamily as though she were being affected by the emotional manipulation as well. "We have to get out of here, baby. We can't fight like this. And he smells _really_ bad." She rolled her eyes at Vick with a wrinkled nose.

"I know," he laughed nonsensically. "What do we do?"

"Let her breathe, baby."

"But -" Elle pushed her fingers up to his mouth before he could announce to the rest of their company that Claire was still alive.

"Let her breathe. He'll drop his concentration and we'll be free."

Vick idly watched the exchange with what he could only assume was Sylar's imaginary friend or something of the like. "You really are a little," he wound his finger about his temple in a loco motion, "aren't you? But I still can't let you have the body."

"Come on. What do you need a dead girl for?"

"I could ask you the same." The sense of lethargy increased several fold until Claire's body felt like a thousand pounds of dead weight on his shoulder. Vick's suspicions were plain to see. "I knew you had something for this one. I could sense it all over you the second you saw her in the ring. Let me guess, double agent for the Department? You trying to run some kind of sting operation on me?"

Claire's fingers twitched against something warm and maybe a little sticky. Her groggy eyes opened to reveal a world turned upside down as she was draped over someone's shoulder like a piece of baggage. There was a torn black shirt in front of her face with blood stains all over it and someone was laughing like an idiot. A set of fingers crept over the back of her thigh, gripping her leg and kneading the muscle absent-mindedly. Flesh came to a full close over her chest and she drew in a ragged gasp for air that inflated her rejuvenated lungs. The laughing stopped. "Sy-Sylar?" _Where the hell am I?_

Elle's apparition had been right. Vick's influence dropped immediately when his concentration was broken. "She's alive! Stop them!"

Sylar dropped Claire to stop the hail of gunfire trained on them. Casings clinked across the floor as the guardsmen were blown back with a telekinetic sweep. She scrambled to her feet, struggling to ascertain what was happening and found herself back to back with her greatest enemy in mutual defense of their lives. A guard rushed in her direction and they spun together so that she could slam him into the wall with a harsh crack. An electrical shock sent Vick to his knees in a seizing fit. The air was sucked from her lungs when the remaining guard landed a kidney shot and they spun again so that Sylar could flick a wrist and bounce his head off the wall with crushing force.

Claire stumbled in the haze of what had just happened, or how they had moved as a solitary unit without thought, but Sylar on the other hand never lost his focus. He approached his former employer and retrieved the knife from his belt that had been tossed into the ring with them. The edges of the blade were still stained with his blood.

"What do you think about killing this one?" Vick's eyes widened in fear as Claire turned her back on them so that she wouldn't see anything that was about to happen, letting that be her only response. "You must have _really_ made her angry," Sylar leered with his own sadistic grin. The ring master's neck snapped in an instant without a sound or finger having been placed upon him. In the next second Claire was once again heaved over Sylar's shoulder watching the floor slip beneath them in a blur of super sonic speed. Stairs were gone in a blink as well as the club doors they passed through and the noise of celebrating patrons.

In the darkness of an alleyway near the edge of the city, Sylar released her from his grasp to lean against a building in mid-construction. She had to shake her head to get her bearings and force the fluid in her inner ear to stop gyrating from the movement resulting in an intense surge of nausea. He caught her by the shoulders before she could fall and leaned her back into her post with a low chuckle.

"Why did you help me? You could have killed me in there and walked away."

His somewhat lightened demeanor instantly darkened again. "I was helping myself, Claire. If word got out that I killed the '_Immortal_'," she scoffed at the mention of her own nickname in disdain, repeating it in silence, "the Department would come down on me in full force. I seem to have enough people after me these days without helping the situation any more."

"I, um, I need to find my team."

"Yes. We should do that." As close as he was standing to her she could feel the heat from his body pressing in on hers and his strangely static scent clung to her nostrils. Claire let her eyes fall to her shoulders where he had yet to remove his hands. It was all somewhat reminiscent of the night that they had met in her office the year before, the way his face lingered so very closely to hers and she began to wonder if he had indeed only been thinking of himself when aiding her escape. If he were thinking about kissing her as his eyes fell to her lips. If he could understand the way blood rushed into the sensitive skin of her mouth at the thought. Or explain why she felt compelled to lean forward that fraction of an inch between them and search for the secrets that before she had only suspected may have existed.

"This doesn't change anything between us."

"I know." He licked his lips tentatively but refused to move. "It can't."

Seconds dragged by with the force of hours while the pair endured in their tenuous staring contest of unspoken curiosity. For her it seemed like forever ago that they had last met face to appropriate face, a time belonging to an entirely different lifetime where he was something to fear. For him it was only seconds ago that he was forced to break her heart for the greater good. Countless questions went unasked and unanswered to the rhythm of chirping nightlife. "You can let me go now."

_I've already let you go. Seeing you again wasn't supposed to be this hard. _"Tell me one thing, Claire." She swallowed hard against the fingertips that ghosted down the slope of her cheek. "Would you believe me if I told you there was a time when you wanted me to touch you?"

"Yes."

* * *

><p>"Any word yet?"<p>

"No. I can't get Micah to pick up his phone." West snapped his cell shut with a drawn out sigh of defeat. "If we could just get a trace, we would be able to find him."

"And Claire." Kyle grimaced as he pulled the wads of tissue paper from his nose, checking to see that the bleeding had stopped. "We're like sitting ducks out here, man. What if that thing comes back? We should at least be looking for them."

"We can't just run off in the dark and hope we're going in the right direction." Alex rested his throbbing head against the seat as he waited for the aspirin that they had found in the helicopter's medical kit to take affect. "No PDA. No answer from the Department. No weapons… We're _blind_ sitting ducks."

"Claire could need us!" Kyle snapped. "Do you even care that she's out there alone?"

West turned on his teammate with unparalleled fury in his eyes. He took hold of O'Keefe's shredded chest armor and slammed his back into the side of the cockpit. "Yes, I care! Don't you _ever_ doubt that I care about what happens to her."

"We all do." Alex had jumped up the second he had seen his friend's temper flare and came to rest a hand on his shoulder. West wasn't a violent man by nature. He frequently acted as a buffer for the team against unnecessary physical force or brutality. But when placed in a stressful situation where he had his ass kicked, his friend dragged off into the night, and his girlfriend missing in action - every man had his breaking point and Kyle wasn't helping by pushing buttons. "Come on, man. We have to keep it together. Zach and Claire need us to keep our cool here."

West released a slightly dazed Kyle from his grip so that he slid to the floor and turned away. Sucking his bottom lip between his teeth he passed into a moment of tense silence, mulling over any possibility for action. As the superior officer in Claire's absence, decisions for the team rested heavily on his shoulders. The burden of command.

"They're coming."

Everyone jumped at the sound of Melanie's voice from the back where she had been sitting quietly with her hands in her lap like a patient child waiting for guidance. "Who's coming, Mel?"

"The Immortals." For the second time that day O'Keefe caught a glimpse of something that he was not privy to. Alex and West shared a look of knowing. He himself was instantly aware of what Waters had meant when she announced the presence of "the Immortals" - plural. It wouldn't just be Claire returning, but Sylar as well. The other members of the team however were not sharing his brief jolt of fear. They weren't worried that the Boogeyman had come to kill them, or that he had somehow captured or tormented Claire, but something else entirely. Kyle jumped up from his spot on the floor with his knife in hand, prepared to make his last stand as well as he could.

West poked his head out from the door of the chopper with Alex breathing heavily just over his shoulder. They watched a clearing of trees sway gently in the distance, waving and rippling as a cloud of dust plumed in their direction. A dark blur of an object hurdling towards them too fast to see clearly appeared around a bend, entering the clearing where they had touched down and came to a hazy stop mere feet from crashing into them. When the dust stilled in the air Sylar and Claire were revealed, with him quirking an inquisitive brow at her as she leaned into his side, grabbing his arm to maintain balance on unsteady legs.

"Claire!" West and Alex both piled out of the aerial vehicle to run at her, sweeping the disoriented girl off of her feet in mercilessly tight hugs of gratitude. "Are you alright? We thought we lost you. What happened?" Babbling choruses of questions ran together in the excitement of happy reunion. Sylar lingered a few paces away, allowing the team's frivolity, until he stepped in enough to give them a gentle mental nudge away before Claire's air supply could be cut off.

"Where were you?" she asked when she could breathe again. "We needed back up earlier and nobody would answer." Claire's eyes fell on the bloodied windshield of the helicopter and came back around to sweep over the gathered members of the team. "What the hell happened here? And where's Zach?"

Feet shuffled uncomfortably and heads were hung in shame. "We lost him, Claire. I don't know what happened, but… We were attacked and…"

"What were you attacked by?" Sylar took a step forward into the dim light and the group turned to stare at him incredulously.

"A guy," West answered quietly.

"A guy," Sylar repeated in annoyance. "A single individual of male gender."

"Yeah."

He rolled his eyes at the less than impressive description. "What did he look like? How tall was he? Ethnicity? Hair or eye color? I assume he had an ability if this person could single-handedly dispatch the majority of the First Response team so what was it?"

Alex blinked a few times at him with a blank expression on his face. West continued to stare at the other man with his jaw hanging slightly open as though he were making first contact with an alien species. They hadn't been exactly sure what to expect from the Boogeyman, but his consideration of their situation was not in the faintest of ideas let alone his personal involvement.

"_Well_?" Claire prodded in open irritation. "If we're going to get Zach back, I need to know everything that happened here. Time is wasting, _tick tock_." Sylar glared in her direction at the pointed imitation of clock work that bordered impersonation of his obnoxious former partner at the Department.

"Uh… Well, he was a little shorter than me. I don't know what he looked like. He was wearing this black cloak thingy like from the Lord of the Rings or something. I couldn't see his face, but his hands were white. Like _white_, white."

"And he had these fingernails," Alex piped up with a crude clawing gesture.

"I don't think he used an ability against us though," West mumbled in thought. "I don't remember being affected by anything."

"Me either." Alex rubbed his eyes as he tried to remember exactly what happened. "Mel. Mel couldn't see anything. She said she was blind."

"She was already like that before the attack though."

Sylar skimmed his fingers over the outside of the helicopter while the others were sorting out the details for Claire. Memories of what had happened flashed through him like a poorly edited film strip. He couldn't see their attacker, but he was able to understand what actions the others had suffered.

_A woman came up to the door pleading for help. She claimed that someone had been following her and that he was going to hurt her. The pilot had been writing notes in his flight log and watching for communications while Alex was sleeping in the backseat. West had been waiting with Melanie in the center row of seats, periodically checking his watch and phone for any sign that Claire needed his help. Zach had been sitting closest to the door, laughing at a movie that he had been watching on his computer with his headphones on. When the knock came he was the one to answer first, but when he approached the crying woman a hand had grabbed him and tossed him out onto the ground. West jumped up to help only to be knocked down with a sucker punch. The pilot had turned in his seat, grabbing for his gun. His arm waved around in the air for a moment, taking a few random shots about the inside of the cockpit as he struggled for control of his weapon. Alex had woken from the noise and dove to the floor for cover from the stray bullets with the others. The pilot's gun was wrenched from his hand and a point-blank shot to the head splattered his blood over the cracked windshield as he fell._

_West recovered in a surge of adrenaline and made to counterattack the invader, but his enemy was stronger and he was forced back to the floor. Alex dove through the air onto the foe's back searching for a chokehold around his neck only to be heaved over the man's shoulders and into the wall, forcefully cracking his head in the process. West continued to fight until hands were wrapped around his throat, pressing insistently inward on his windpipe. As he neared unconsciousness a distress call came over the radio. Kyle started to ask for assistance when the radio was flicked off. _

"_Your leader killed my sister, you know," a voice rasped into West's ear before he faded completely. "Tell Claire Bennet that I'll be waiting for her in Freedom Park by the memorial. She has four hours to come find me - alone - or your friend is going to die."_

_Melanie stumbled about blindly with her hands splayed out in front of her to search for obstructions. She was watched for a moment, an odd sense of mild amusement in the air for her lack of threat. A decision of sorts must have been made. The helpless agent was thrown down, the blindfold ripped from her eyes and tied about her neck to constrict her into unconsciousness._

_Zach crawled backwards away from the approaching figure in fear. He wasn't like the others. He didn't have any super powers that could save the world. He wasn't trained to fight. He didn't even know how to use a gun if he needed to. He was just a kid that was good with computers and wanted to help his friends. And he was dragged away into the night by an enemy he never knew he had._

"I assume you followed code 3489.6 in accordance with Department regulation to call in for back up. What's the E.T.A. on that?"

West promptly resumed his state of confusion. "Forty-five minutes still. The closest contact base is in Hong Kong."

Sylar took the briefest of glances at his wrist watch to confirm that information with what he had found for a time frame of potential rescue. Whomever this newest thorn in his side was, they had done their homework and carefully timed the attack so that any outside help wouldn't arrive in time. "There were only four names listed in the pilot's log for this flight. What were the other two doing here?"

"Just deadheading."

"To where?"

Claire gave him her best 'go to hell' look and crossed her arms in defiance. "None of your damn business."

"You were transporting undocumented passengers while on a sanctioned mission, Claire. Not to mention that one of them didn't even have the proper clearance to be in a combat vehicle in the first place. Now your pilot is dead, a Department staffer is M.I.A., and you have weapons that you can't account for. Let's completely forget that you have absolutely no jurisdiction to even be in the country while in official capacity, or that you were witnessed abducting a six-year-old girl after assaulting her mother with what I believe to be considered a lethal ability under code 9312.7, paragraph two, or that you participated in an illegal fight as described in the International Convention for Protection of the Evolved, and ask yourself how that's going to look when your much needed back up arrives." She stuttered for a moment in a pitiful attempt at retort until he cut her off. "Unless a complete media circus is your idea of fun, I suggest you start supplying me with all the information I require. Or should we start counting how many felonies you've committed in the last twelve hours again?"

_We were just going to her parents' house for dinner. It was supposed to be an easy mission, and Claire didn't want anyone to know that she would be meeting her father…_

Sylar glanced in West's direction as he mindlessly chewed on a thumb nail while thinking. "Thank you." West's eyes widened when Claire smacked him on the arm for unwittingly giving away their secret.

"_What_?"

"And what exactly were you supposed to be doing with Ivy Connors?"

Claire sighed in defeat when Alex started humming the Star-Spangled Banner to keep his mind off of what he knew. "She has the ability to decrypt computer code. The Department has a mole and we needed her to flush him out. There, you know everything. Happy now?"

"Hardly," he murmured to himself as he thought over the implications of what he had just learned. They were on to Micah which meant that it was only a matter of time before the boy was found out. A serious problem that would have to be dealt with lest other Rebel members be uncovered.

"Hey!" Claire yelled after him when he stalked away from the rest of the group, aiming to wander off in the dark. She ran after him and grabbed his arm to stop his retreat. "Where do you think you're going?"

"To get your friend back."

"You know where he is?"

"Yes, and if I hurry there might still be enough time to get him back alive."

"You're taking me with you."

"No, Claire. I'm not."

"Yes, Sylar. _You are_."

He rolled his eyes in annoyance when she kept trying to follow him, keeping a hold of his shirt in case he decided to make a run for it. Sylar whirled around and gripped her upper arm like a child so that he would have her undivided attention. "The person that took your friend? He wasn't after him. He was after _you_. The only reason that he got taken was because you weren't there, and he wasn't supposed to be there. He's _bait_, Claire. A trap. And all because you got careless."

Claire turned her face away to use her free hand to wipe away the tear that rolled down her cheek from the harsh sting of truth. "You're right. I got sloppy. I admit it. But this is my fight and I'm still coming with you."

"Regulation number 36, paragraph nine in regards to the _Potential Threat to Human Life_ index, and I quote: 'In the event that a field agent should be taken hostage by any harmful entities known or otherwise it is the duty of the designated team leader or ranking officer to order all remaining agents out of the hostile environment. The respectful parties are then to wait accordingly in safe haven until reinforcements become available'."

"Don't you dare quote code to me!" Claire fumed at him. "I wrote that code!"

"Yes, you did. And with some help for rather unfortunate spelling errors." He didn't give her the chance to argue further. Sylar scooped her up and tossed her over his shoulder as he had earlier and marched her kicking and screaming back to the bewildered group that looked on, uncertain as to whether they should be trying to stop him or not. He unceremoniously dumped an infuriated Claire in the chopper and slammed the door shut, using his newly acquired pyrokinesis to melt the locking mechanism in place so that it couldn't be opened again.

"What should we be doing?" West called after him as he began walking away again while Claire screamed profane threats from the other side.

"Make sure she doesn't get out."

Alex watched him disappear in a blaze of speed before turning his attention back to the enraged blonde stuck in the helicopter. She punched and kicked at the door with all of her might causing a lot of noise, but very little to no damage. He shared a look with West as they both struggled to repress the laughter that wanted to break free. "Damn."

"He's a little intense."

* * *

><p>"How was work?" he chuckled lightly into the phone. "Long and dull. Taking pictures of cheating husbands all day isn't exactly what I'd call exciting." Matt tucked his cell beneath his chin to power down his computer and shove a filing drawer closed before grabbing his coat. "Yeah, I'm on my way home now. Love you too." Unbeknownst to Parkman as he locked up the office that night, there was a brawl going on in the alley behind his private detective agency, and for the victor the spoils would be his life.<p>

Miranda stumbled back into the wall of the building under the onslaught, her katana forcefully balancing a set of shining daggers away from her neck. A push of telekinesis shoved Whitlocke's Ranger back so that she could gain her ground again. Ando climbed to his feet after being knocked down and made to grab the assailant from behind only to be elbowed in the face. He landed on his backside in a puddle and groaned for the ache in his tailbone.

Steel clashed against steel as the combatants twirled in perfect time with one another. For every attack and counterstrike Miranda maneuvered, her opponent mirrored the action flawlessly. Fighting a muscle mimic was quite the challenge with Hiro's moral restrictions in place. Apparently ripping a person's molecular essence from their beings was reprehensible in his world. Granted, the future version of the man that she had known had made it a point to instruct her on the value of human life. They were not to kill unless the lives of others were in direct peril or if it were otherwise an absolute necessity to do so. However, she felt herself wondering if perhaps the long years of negotiating battle fields had softened him towards the idea because his younger self felt an incessant need to protect the lives of their enemies, and leave their abilities intact if at all possible, no matter how much of a risk it posed to the group. But then again she was forced to admit to herself that the Hiro she held such high esteem for had also become a very stoic and somewhat emotionally distant man. It was a bit refreshing to indulge in his youthful laughter and relaxed attitude after so much time spent with a real hard-ass. The mimic landed a carefully calculated sweep with one of his weapons that knocked the Kensei's sword from her hand to clatter along the pavement.

She dodged a flurry of attacks from both sides by weaving in and out of the wide strokes. "A little help here!" Ando summoned a burst of crimson static to the tips of his finger tips and blasted their enemy with an arch of lightning. The mimic faltered for a split second being caught somewhat off guard but launched himself back into the heat of battle with renewed fervor. Miranda used the distraction to run for the wall, utilizing her momentum to climb the side of it and flip over in hopes of catching her foe's back. Unfortunately the dose of Masahashi's super-charging ability fueled the mimic to double-time capability and he followed the movement exactly in reverse, catching her in mid-air. Their bodies slammed into one another and came crashing back to the earth with heavy thuds.

It was adrenaline alone that kept her going. During the collision the Ranger had driven a blade deep into her side to penetrate a kidney. Dark red blood poured from the wound that her hand attempted to keep pressure on, some of the fluid oozing out between her fingers. Another burst of telekinesis brought her sword back to the free hand and helped to block a majority of the incoming attacks. Sweat dripped down the sides of her pain-anguished face as Ando attempted to zap the mimic again. "Stop helping me!" she snarled through clenched teeth as the attacks came even faster and with a hundred times more force.

Realizing that there wouldn't be any way to win otherwise, Miranda sacrificed another searing stab. Twin daggers tore their way into her abdomen with fatal accuracy, but it brought her opponent within arm's reach and stopped the attacks long enough to place a palm to his chest. Light filtered out from under her hand as she sought the energy from every living cell in his body and pulled. The mimic gave a startled choking sound and then collapsed to his knees, powerless.

Miranda stared into the shining orb of energy that remained in the palm of her hand for a moment before closing her fist around it. Upon opening her hand again the light was gone and the breeze carried away floating particles of ash. Hiro moaned from the depths of the dumpster where he had been rudely tossed before having the opportunity to freeze time. He popped his head over the top just in time to see Miranda sink to her knees on the damp asphalt. "Pinch! (_Crap_!)"

His feet made hollow banging sounds against the metal sides of the commercial garbage receptacle as he hoisted himself back over the edge. Ando poked through the mimic's pockets for items of a useful nature to the group while blood continued to steadily pour from Miranda's wounds. After picking himself back up from the ground where he had fallen, Hiro grabbed the shoulder of the newly useless soldier, pushed his glasses back up onto the bridge of his nose where they belonged and blinked away. Depositing the Ranger back into the time he rightfully belonged took only a second and he popped back into the alley with a jubilant, "Yatta!"

"It's your turn," Ando grumbled as he waved a slim plastic vial in the air at Hiro.

The time traveler took a single look at the container of regenerative blood that had been lifted from Whitlocke's mimic and wrinkled his nose with a shake of his head. "I did it last time."

"No way, Hiro, I'm not doing it again. She's _your_ responsibility, not mine."

"What happened to taking turns?" he whined with a touch of petulant pouting.

Miranda's eyes rolled out of focus as she slumped to the ground in a limp heap. Her paling lips quivered, feeling for all the world that she was slowly freezing to death as her heart struggled to keep pumping. "Fine," Ando groaned with a roll of his eyes. "But it's _your_ turn next time."

He worked the rubber stopper free from the vial of blood and held it ready. Kneeling down next to the girl, he lifted her rapidly chilling hand to his chest and invited her to take what she needed to stay alive. She was fading enough that the exchange was slow to begin. The previously quarreling Japanese traded glances of worry that perhaps they had waited too long, but then he felt the tug of sudden fatigue and signaled that it was alright. Hiro watched nervously as his friend's eyelids fluttered sleepily for a moment before his mouth opened in a startled gasp. Blood vessels all over his body thundered beneath the skin with an unhealthy fluctuation of pressure. His eyes ran bloodshot as the delicate tissues burst. Membranes in the nasal cavity exploded to send a gush of blood down his chin. Nakamura was quick to sever the connection between them before Miranda drained enough of him to spark cardiac arrest.

Ando fell back limply into Hiro's arms with his muscles nervously twitching and jerking randomly to combat an existential trauma. Hiro took care to pour the contents of the vial into his friend's mouth without missing a drop. It had been quite fortunate for them that all of Whitlocke's soldiers had come equipped with samples of Claire's endlessly life restoring blood in absence of more traditional medical packs. The blood was almost instantly effective for injuries sustained in the field. It's rejuvenating benefits as well as being lightweight to carry and a valuable space saver had made it indispensable.

"That's so disgusting," Ando murmured as the color returned to his skin. Immediately his tissues were revitalized, all prior damages and strain repaired, blood flowing freely, energy restored, pressures and body temperature regulated. While having to "donate" his energy to help keep Miranda alive and healthy was a typically painful experience, the measure and length of which was prolonged by the severity of her own damage, every time he was forced to ingest the blood he ended up feeling years younger afterward.

Miranda panted for breath for a moment as she waited for her wounds to heal. She knew that she hadn't been able to take enough for a complete restoration. There would still be some bruising and discomfort to endure, but soon enough the more severe trauma would heal. The bleeding slowed to a minor trickle and then stopped altogether as flesh was sewn back into place. As soon as the surface wounds had closed she sat up to take inventory of the situation. "Three Rangers and a Sentinel to go."

"_Only_ four more to go," Ando repeated with a frustrated roll of his eyes.

"Don't worry, Ando-kun," Hiro said with a confident smile, "we will catch them all."

"Eventually, yes," a voice came from the shadows. Another Ranger came slinking out of the dark, clad in a thinner and much more flexible body armor designed for Whitlocke's muscle mimic forces. "But the question is, can you find all of us in time?"

Miranda shrewdly eyed the lithe form being concealed by the black fabric and the shining pair of kris strapped to her hips. "What do you want, Monica?"

Humorless chuckling answered her as the Ranger pulled her mask away to reveal aging dark skin that was pitted and scarred from shrapnel and toxic gas attacks. "You sound just like your mother when you say that." Dawson's dark eyes took in the group's crestfallen reaction with a twisted mirth of broken conscience.

Cold fury ignited in Miranda's eyes as she held her hands aloft, focusing on the space around the leader of the Ranger forces and gripped, threatening to rip apart the very fabric of reality and its occupant regardless of Hiro's restrictions. "Don't make me repeat myself."

"And look at that. That's your daddy shining through there." Monica beamed a smile at her that mocked genuine good will. "If you were going to kill me, you would have done it already." The mimic casually strolled out the gravitational suspension assured that mild curiosity would stay her execution long enough to speak her peace. "Hiro. Ando," she nodded with a touch of respect as she circled around them like a shark prepared to close in on wounded prey.

"Do we know her?" Ando whispered to a slightly confused Hiro.

"Not yet," Miranda responded, her eyes never leaving their enemy. "Hopefully you'll never have to."

"You've got three months left until the Massacre." Dawson stopped directly in front of her. There was the briefest flicker of sadness in her eyes before the emotion was engulfed in madness again. "Richards is staying close to her side at Kline. Playing body guard. O'Keefe is positioned on the First Response team next to Bennet just like he likes to be." A sour sneer was mutually shared between the two women at the mention of his name. "And Rossdale…" Her voice picked up in volume, calling out the name.

Another figure peeked out from the shadows, hesitant to expose his cover at first, but then stepping out into the dim light of the alley in assumption that he was being summoned by his commanding officer to take part in the exchange. "Come here, Rossdale," Monica ordered. The man in the black body suit that matched hers accordingly crossed to her side obediently. Hiro tensed in preparation to freeze time while bright red flecks of static danced in Ando's hands. Miranda drew up her guard to defend the group but watched Monica's face closely for any detection of what was about to transpire. But, thoroughly trained as she was, the mimic never gave the faintest inkling as to what her plans were until the strike.

Everyone jumped when in the fluid blink of an eye Dawson withdrew one of her daggers and drove it into her comrade's back. She looped an arm around his neck to stifle the scream and violently twisted. "I can't touch the other two," she muttered with a grunt, releasing her blade from the flesh of the other mimic. "And I can't disobey orders." The blood on her kris was wiped clean on the shirt of the Ranger that crumpled at her feet. "But I _can_ tell you that Whitlocke has Level Six going into construction next month. The Department is going to have access to our cryo tech." Her fingers absent-mindedly traced over the jagged pock marks etched into the side of her face at the memory. "Graves is on the move. Belladonna is dead so that means -"

"He didn't get the cure."

"And Claire is in Singapore with Sylar as we speak."

Hiro reached out to steady Miranda when it seemed as though her legs would give out. "It's happening all over again."

"Not quite. We know how to stop it this time. Just promise me that you'll kill O'Keefe for what he did to Micah." Dawson gave the body of the dead Ranger a spiteful kick, sending a glass vial to roll over the damp pavement with a clink. Miranda jumped away from the sight of sickly green fluid tumbling inside of the vial.

"Don't touch it!" she screamed at Ando when he knelt down to pick up the container. They looked around for Monica but she had used the distraction to shadow step out of sight.

"Three months," a disembodied voice called out to them from the dark.

"What is it?" Hiro nudged his glasses back in to place on his nose so that he could squint at the foreign substance.

"Her secret weapon." Telekinesis lifted the vial securely from the ground to float into delicately ginger hands. "She's really going to do it this time. She talked about it for years, but…" Shocked incredulity painted her features as she stared into memories beyond the object she held. "You guys should go. I'll take this back where it belongs."

Hiro paused in an attempt to think of something comforting to say but ultimately decided that the girl needed a moment to herself to sort through whatever painful feelings she was experiencing. They could talk later when their safety was no longer in question. He pulled Ando out of space and time with promises of a hot shower and waffles.

When she knew she was alone in the still of the night, Miranda tucked the vial of green fluid into a pocket. Pulling out a heart shaped locket that draped from her neck beneath her shirt, she pried it apart to look at what used to be pictures inside. In one half was a memory of a photo that had been taken long ago of herself with a pale, but handsome man with dark hair and a wide smile, their infant son held between them. In the other half was the memory of her Hiro with her and a bright-eyed Charlie.

"I'm sorry, Daddy. I tried." Her thumb smudged away the tear that fell into the locket. "I'll stop it this time. I promise. But I need more power." The locket snapped shut to be replaced in its hiding space. And with a concentrated blink Miranda disappeared into the tangled web of time.

**To be continued...**


	12. It's Coming

**12**

**It's Coming…**

* * *

><p><em>December, 2012<em>

Sylar pulled up short of the glass at the last possible second. Claire on the other hand didn't even bother trying to fight the force of momentum that carried her directly into the solid plates only to bounce off with an unhealthy ringing sensation in her bones from impact. She landed hard on her backside to which Sylar found immense amusement. He didn't quite point and laugh, but the expression on his face told her he was doing so on the inside.

"What did you think was going to happen, Claire?" He pawed at the chilled glass so that it made the most irritating of squeaking noises. "This glass is tempered to resist enhanced strength, fire, ice, and any other range of physical or elemental abilities. We're not going to break it any time soon." She flew a one-fingered salute in his direction and he only vibrated harder with barely contained laughter at the crude gesture. "Good to see you too, sweetheart."

"What are you doing here, Sylar?"

A wry smile lifted in the corner of his mouth as he continued to scratch at the glass. "I was bored."

"So you came up with a diabolical plot to annoy me to death?"

"Why do you think they gave you the comfortable side of the room? These cells were obviously rebuilt to be joined, but only your half is decorated." Claire's heart jumped in pace for a moment but she refused to be sidestepped so easily. "If I knew treason came with perks like this, I would have made more effort to mention it in my charges."

On queue, the door panel separating their cells slid open with a light hiss of colliding air fronts. Fog billowed out into Sylar's half of the room when the refrigerated air from hers clashed against the warmth on the other side. Claire crawled backwards in a pang of fear when she could no longer see where he had gone. Once the irrational fury of heightened hormones had subsided, reality set back into place. She was alone, mostly powerless, vulnerable in a cage, and the hunter had been allowed inside. Their little cat and mouse games didn't seem quite so amusing anymore.

"It's a little chilly in here." Claire jumped at the sound of his voice behind her. Rolling over, she found him reclined on her bed with his hands folded beneath his head, watching the puffs of steam from his breath evaporate in the air. "What do you say we turn the thermostat up a bit?" Sylar slid from the frosty sheets lazily with a vindictive smirk on his lips for her. Bright blue flames erupted from his palms to lick over flesh that could not be burned. He pressed his hands to the wall, enjoying the anxiety building within his cellmate at the sight of the ice melting away. Degree by precious degree the atmosphere helping to regulate her out of control body temperatures was heating up.

"Sylar." She couldn't be sure if her tone came across as more of the command she wanted it to be, or a frightened plea for mercy. "Please. Don't." Whatever it was that he heard cross her lips, it caught his undivided attention.

"Since when do you say _please_ to me?"

He snapped the full force of all of his intuition towards her when his overly sensitive ears picked up on a weak fluttering sound. Where the cold had kept the source of the noise serene before, the sudden heat had disturbed it. Claire reflexively covered her stomach for protection when his eyes scanned over her form but she couldn't stop him from detecting the brilliant spirits of color that bloomed out from her where the sound originated. The fires died in his hands.

"Claire, is there something that you'd like to tell me?" Sylar swallowed the lump in his throat over the cotton dryness that had sapped all the moisture from his mouth. He moved to her side with a sloth of motion born partly from shock and the need to not startle her further. Fingertips ghosted over the range of bruises and cuts decorating her body, sprinkling dashes of frost in their wake. Her arms slipped from her sides as she turned her face away with glistening tears in her eyes so that he could lift her shirt to see for himself the secret that held potential to fire the first shot of the war.

Tendrils of ice crawled over the skin of his hand where flames had been before and they spiraled outward into twisted winter designs across her belly as he placed his palm over the bump that had just begun to show itself to the world. "Like the fact that you're pregnant."

A low whistle of a sigh escaped him into the thunder clouds of turbulent thought that gathered over his head. Theirs was not the kind of world to be bringing a child into. Not at that time. And certainly not in a prison cell. Sylar saw her shoulders tremble from the corner of his eye and turned a worried face to see her carefully maintained walls crumble downward in a fit of choked sobs. He wanted to tell her that it wasn't the end. He wanted to tell her that they would find a way to make it through as they always did. But the words failed him when she crawled into his side, twisting her fingers in his shirt and burying her face in his chest. So instead he let his forehead fall to rest on hers, wrapping his arms around her and holding her as he should have been all along.

There was one question though that he could not erase from the multitude of troubled thoughts plaguing him at that moment though. The detail in all of these events that threatened to bother him the most. "Claire, who's the father?"

* * *

><p><em>New York, 2032<em>

Sylar knelt down in reverence before the fallen general. Using two fingers to trail down the man's scarred and bloodied face, he drooped the half-open eyes to a peaceful close. He rooted around the neck of the armored chest plate to dig out a set of I.D. tags. The silver tags tinkled lightly as he lifted them free of the body and roamed his fingers over the name and serial number stamped on them.

"I just want this war to end," he had told him only hours before the tragic end. _I just want this war to end. _Twenty years of fighting had taken its toll on all of them. Twenty impossibly long years of chaos, blood, and loss. Double crossing and betrayal at every turn fueled by a hatred that had nothing to do with most of the players and never should have been allowed to exist in the first place. It was one thing for someone like Sylar to be ready for the end, but for a man that had spent more than half of his adult life on the battlefront dodging bullets and watching the bodies fall; even in death the exhaustion of it all was heavily imprinted on his features with every premature wrinkle, gray hair, and shadow in the hollows of his sleepless eyes.

In another time, another life, Sylar had wanted to kill the man he paid his respects to. He had craved the feel of his blood on his hands for stealing away what had never belonged to him. At the end though all he felt was regret that it had taken the passing of the eleventh hour to see what all the man had done for their cause. For him. Providing for his wife when Sylar hadn't been able to. Keeping a tight grip on Whitlocke's reigns when common sense should have told him to run for his own sake so that more lives had not been lost than already filled the unnecessary mass graves. Feeding their Rebel forces the information they needed to take down the cryo core and… save his daughter. Sylar owed him Miranda's life.

He held the dog tags tightly in his fist as Sylar rose to pry away the boards covering the window of the last Alliance stronghold - what remained of Kline Enterprises and the very room that Lucius himself had kept for an office. The Rebellion's conquering of the upper Manhattan base would complete the sacking of New York and mark the finality of the revolution. All remnants of the old Department were being erased as he watched. "Specials" everywhere would be free from the tyranny to live in peace, or at least what few of them had survived.

Explosions continued to rock the crumbling architecture as Rebel forces traversed the minefields below. Their body armor obscured most identifying traits but by the trademark whirlwind of sands sweeping over the field he could recognize Sparrow Redhouse clearing a trail for her team, mercilessly sandblasting anything that dared to cross her path into oblivion. One of their own strayed from the trail and looked up into the window with silent shock as the explosive beneath his feet gave its beeping alarm that it had been triggered. In the next second the lone soldier was little more than a pink mist drifting in the breeze. Fire rained down around them from one of the towers that had yet to realize that they had been defeated, catching blistering skin that fell to the lifeless grounds as ash. Screams and gunfire echoed from beyond his view as an angry rumbling in the Earth's crust gave birth to gnawing gashes that swallowed anyone unable to outrun their reach. What a glorious battle it had been. But at what cost had the war really been won?

"Hey, check this out," Peter called. He had plucked a glass vial of Whitlocke's corrupted formula free from a fallen soldier and waved it about carelessly.

"Jesus," Sylar flinched at the sight as though his comrade were twirling around an active sample of nitroglycerine. "Be careful with that! Damn it."

"How did this not break?" he laughed, tossing the vial up into the air and catching it just to watch Sylar squirm. On one toss the glass container slipped through his fingers to surely shatter on the floor and release the toxic green fluid within. In a split second decision Sylar threw his hand out towards the vial, tearing open a swirling vortex that swallowed the weapon into oblivion. Withdrawing his hand closed the rift.

"Where did you get that little trick?" Peter half-asked, half-snarled. Sylar grimaced for the blunder when he saw the telltale darkening in the other man's eyes. The _hunger_ had come to call. "How long have you been keeping that from me?"

_That's not the only thing I've been keeping from you._ Peter raised his hand to charge a pulse of energy which was easily deflected by a flick of Sylar's wrist to blast a searing hole in the wall. "Don't try me, Two-Face," he glared. "We're not as matched for abilities as you think we are." Sylar strung the jingling set of dog tags that he had taken from the fallen Alliance general around his neck and tucked them beneath his shirt with his own. Peter and the others would see the action as that of claiming a trophy of sorts, but in reality it was a final motion of respect that his tags not be taken by anyone who couldn't acknowledge the sacrifices that had been made. They would be returned to whom they rightfully belonged and laid to rest in peace.

"You're right," Peter grinned so that the scar neatly splitting his face in half crinkled around the eye that it ran through. "We're not." In a flash his body morphed into the form of a hulking grizzly bear with saliva coated incisors that gleamed in a roaring mouth.

Sylar didn't even waste a blink at the maneuver. It ceased to be impressive after the first dozen times or so that Luke had done it. He was mildly irritated with the swath of thick drool that had been flung onto his sleeve however, and he brushed it off while giving the growling Petrelli the best "go to hell" look he could muster. Peter charged at him in all of the feral glory that could be managed in such a tight space, snapping serrated lines of glistening teeth all the way. He waited until the last second to merely sidestep the advance and watched as the half-mad grizzly plowed through the weakened wall structure to plummet to the ground below. Two distinctive blasts of land mines echoed up the failing architecture, rippling out into the floorboards beneath his feet which began to buckle towards collapsing under the strain.

Peter teleported back into the room with a subtle _pop_ to spit a hunk of bloodied shrapnel at his feet. "Dick move." Sylar was prepared to give a scathing retort about learning not to run into things headfirst when another space _pop_ disrupted the Petrelli from prying metal slivers out of his arm. "Miranda?"

"I can't stop them all. Not in time. Not like this." He cringed for the wild determination in her eyes; the exact same look that Claire got when she was about to do something irrational that no one would be able to keep her from. Not for the first time he mentally questioned the combination of Gray and Petrelli DNA. The girl had gotten his tooth and nail stubborn attitude with the charge in headfirst mentality, and all on a hair-trigger temper. "I need more power."

Miranda motioned to lay a hand on him, but Sylar moved away from the contact. "No you don't."

She laughed at him callously, almost daring him to stop her. "I'm taking it. One way or another…"

"I'll give it to you," Peter grinned, extending his hand for the ability transference. Sylar swatted him away with a menacing glare.

Like the biblical challenge for superiority between father and son, Miranda reached out to bind her biological father in telekinetic restraints. With her crafted limitations however, the invasion only resulted in an obstinate staring match between them, each exerting their will for mental dominance until she was forced to pull back. A small trickle of light red blood leaked out from a nostril that was wiped away to smear across her cheek. Sylar took a steadying breath to remain strong in the face of the bewildered look she shot at him, appearing as if he had physically slapped her.

Peter leaned back against the window to watch the show unfolding like he wished he could pop a bowl of popcorn before the Superbowl. "He's thinking that you turned out to be a spoiled brat, you know," he chuckled darkly.

"We didn't give up _everything_ to stop Lucius and the old Department so that you could throw it all away," Sylar fumed at the girl. "So that you could be used and manipulated like we were."

"I'm inclined to agree," Peter continued to muse to himself since the other two ignored his jibe.

"Tell me how that worked out for you." Miranda crossed her arms over her chest defiantly with a pointed look out the window to the world crumbling around them. Shrill shrieks of terror filtered out from the growling snare of shifting tectonics. Another rumbling shudder shook them all to the core; the steel skeleton of the building screeching an ungodly banshee's howl of twisting metal as it gave way.

Peter was quick to claw at a warping beam when the window collapsed behind him, leaving the Petrelli to dangle in the wind on the bent bar several stories above the shifting earth. Sylar grappled with what remained of the creaking floor, leveraging his weight with the leg that had been pinned by falling supports to focus on the grip he held on Miranda's hand to keep her from falling into the abyss of air she was hanging out in. A fall from that height would crush her body in a way that she could never survive. "Don't you dare let go," he growled at her when her fingers started to slip.

And then she smiled at him. A smile of wicked intentions that he could see spinning behind her vibrant blue eyes. One way or another indeed. Miranda released her hold on his hand and slipped from his grasp to spread her arms out for free fall. His breath caught in his throat for a moment at the sight of her hurdling towards the ground and certain death. With a calculated blink he teleported free from his position, grabbing on to her in mid-air. Peter felt a pang of mischievous intuition and grinned for the ingenuity of it all. Launching himself from his own impending disaster, he joined the tumbling family. Snatching a hold of Sylar's shirt in just the nick of time, they all disappeared from space and time with a little _pop_ just as the debris they had carried with them shattered on impact with the earth.

* * *

><p><em>September, 2012<em>

Freedom Park as it had come to be known was much more like a large courtyard than an actual park. Situated between a humble cathedral and a rather unique hostel that catered to the influx of "specials", the area had been decorated by the local residents in celebration of finally finding a place they could call home. Lush green grass grew in unimpeded swaths with intermittent patches of fuzzy moss that gave the little hill a cozy checkerboard appearance. Around the edges of a hand-dug pond, bedazzling displays of floral brilliance illuminated the grounds with the most visually intoxicating range of colors imaginable. Stone benches aligned with the creation for visitors to rest on while enjoying the natural beauty, relaxing to the scent of jasmine in the breeze, or contemplating to the gentle splashing sounds of bright golden fish that occupied the waters beneath floating lily pads. The center of the space had been adorned with a fountain; the statue of which, being a somewhat androgynous person holding a floating orb that resembled the planet Earth, had become a memorial for all of those that had been persecuted in a world unprepared for coexistence with the evolved. Sylar had spent nearly an hour unabashedly staring at the statue the first time he had seen its wonder. Others seemed to find some form of hope or unity in the symbolism, but he just wanted to know how the damn thing worked. There hadn't been anyone around to control the floating sphere so there had been an amount of mystery in the strange device. In the end though he had figured out that the thing was made of some ingeniously crafted iron and enhanced magnets set to reverse polarities. Perhaps it wasn't as fascinating after that, but it remained aesthetically pleasing nonetheless.

He took care to shape shift into Claire's form a good time in advance before reaching the designating meeting area so that whomever would be watching for her arrival wouldn't immediately suspect the switch. Strolling down the moonlit paths at average speed for her considerably shorter stature became a frustration in itself when he had become used to traveling in an ability driven capacity, but since Claire wouldn't be using such tools it was a necessity. Sylar took a moment to enjoy the modifications that had been made to the Department issued body suits since his departure; mostly the lack of hindrance by groin chafing that was Mohinder's original design, but also the smoother texture improvements to the fabric that made it feel like a wonderfully snug velour blanket on the skin. They also seemed to be significantly lighter in weight, and the heels of the standard issue boots were reinforced with a blissfully cushioned padding so that they could walk for hours on end as if treading on clouds. But all of that appreciation was a focused attempt to ignore the torture devices known as the thong underwear and the underwire bra. Transforming into a female, nay, a female that couldn't feel _pain_, had its drawbacks. He just reminded himself with a grin on Claire's face that it wasn't actually a perverted act every time he ran his hands over the buttocks to readjust the foreign string running the crack of his ass. It was still _his_ body after all. Not the real thing.

Sylar reached the park and approached the fountain, cautiously looking in all directions before tugging at the underwire and palming her form's breasts in a futile attempt to make the contraption more comfortable, and then sat down on the cool marble rim with a huff. No wonder she always had a look of annoyance on her face. He would certainly be making a platonic suggestion about the finer attributes of boxer briefs later.

His fingers trailed about in the cool murmuring waters as he looked over all of the names inscribed around the statue's base in a variety of languages, listening to the chirping nightlife and the buzzing of thousands of fireflies that lit the grounds with their twinkling. A few minutes passed in waiting and he glanced down at his wrist watch to see that there were only ten remaining until the cloaked figure had said that Zach would die. Sylar paused when a splash in the fountain's water reflected something shiny in the dim light. It wasn't unusual to find any number of international currencies there, but what he thought he saw wasn't a coin. Taking a risk, he allowed a hum of electricity to flow out of the fingers of one hand, illuminating the water so that the other could reach out to grasp the strange object. It was a copper coupling that he discovered, connecting a thin hose to the fountain's aerator.

Curiosity and the familiar sense of dread convinced him to follow the hose. Sylar traced the path of water around the base of the fountain and out a few meters to where it fed into a stump of plastic piping imbedded in the ground. "You've got to be shitting me," he cursed into the darkness, the words falling surprisingly easily from Claire's cherubic lips.

During the day the scene would have been much more pronounced to someone with his observational skills, but with only the light of the waning moon and flying insects to guide him, he feared that it might have taken too long. The grass around where the piping fed into the ground had been very carefully cut apart and rolled back to cover a particularly soft patch of soil. Since most of the earth was fairly fresh from the grounds' recent cultivation, once the piping had been pushed down and the hose removed, the casual passerby never would have noticed that the space had been disturbed. Or that something had been buried there.

Claire's dainty hands dug into the rich dirt with a masked amount of enhanced strength to help progress. Her nails were dirtied, chipped, and stripped away at the quick, growing back before blood could rise to the surface in the ferocity of the excavation. With only seconds to spare by his watch, Sylar hit something solid. Wiping away the loose soil that remained, he uncovered a Plexiglas box containing a squirming body that was fighting a rapidly rising water content.

He dropped his act enough to employ telekinesis, using the ability to help shift the mass of dirt that still encased the water casket. At the foot of the box the hose tapered into a drip set so that the fountain water had been allowed to enter at a steadily timed rate. Sylar jerked out the tubing and went to work with his telekinetic scalpel to carve out an opening for the boy to escape through. Freezing cold water splashed out of the box and soaked him through but at least the kid came rushing out with it, praising deities, his friend for finding him, and maybe the grass in between pathetic sputters for air.

Clapping echoed out to them from the shadows and Claire's body instinctually whirled around to meet the cause of the noise. Their mysterious cloaked figure approached as casually as an old friend with an air of amusement. "Well played," came the gravely voice. "You passed the test. That means your little friend can go along now." A pale white hand motioned for Zach to be on his way. He glanced at Claire and when she mouthed a "_go_" at him, he didn't need to be told again. He probably had the most sense out of any of the other D.S.R.E.C. idiots that Sylar had encountered. There wasn't any kind of narcissistic hero complex sitting around in that one. He just wanted to get the hell out of there and was perfectly alright with letting himself have that.

"Unfortunately, it wasn't _your_ test to pass. I do believe that I asked for Claire Bennet quite clearly. And from what I could tell from her picture, she wasn't a six-foot tall man lax on shaving."

Sylar tilted his head to the side, reaching out with Parkman's telepathy to try and read how his disguise had been seen through so easily. The irritating buzzing sensation returned with the vengeance of a thousand pissed off hornets trapped in his skull. No matter how hard he tried to push beyond the numbing barrier there was not a single trace of thought to be gleaned from the man.

"You'll find that your abilities do not work on me," he gloated from under the cover of his hood. Sylar gave him a sideways smirk in preparation to challenge that theory. He lifted a lethal finger and commenced to slicing… a portion of the cloak and what looked like a black shirt beneath it. He tried again with a little more force, and got the same results. A fully charged lightning bolt, fireball, shattering, sound blast, and seismic shock later yielded little improvement. He couldn't dampen the use of abilities like the Haitian, but continuously attacking him with them earned nothing but the smell of burnt cotton and a bored sigh.

Claire's body walked right up to the stranger without so much as a flinch of reaction. He reached out to touch the figure just to make sure that there wasn't some sort of force field at work and found no resistance. Yet where there should have been screaming and gore, there wasn't a single drop of blood. Not even a paper cut. Even regens bled. Even those with impenetrable skin could have their minds and emotions and memories read.

"Interesting." A long forgotten memory of Parkman's that had been absorbed during their less than involuntary sharing of a mind prompted an epiphany. Matt had once attempted to use his ability against the Haitian and suffered similar results to what Sylar had felt during his invasion of the cloaked person. And during their prior encounter when he had experienced the full bodily numbing effects, he had been reaching outward with multiple mental abilities at once as had become habit over the years. Which seemed to further explain why the rest of the agents had not been affected at all. So long as their abilities couldn't be used against him, or at least were not employed during contact, the foe was unable to harm them back. "A reverse Haitian," Sylar chuckled to himself with little humor.

"Xander Graves." He introduced himself dryly without extending his hand for greeting.

"That's quite an ability. I'd like to see how that works." Maybe he couldn't use any powers against the man, but his then starving _hunger_ coiled to strike with the idea that he didn't really need to. His hand flashed out to grasp Graves by the neck, the other summoning a broken stone from the fountain. Xander was quick to defend himself though and the two men found themselves at a bit of an impasse when nearly equally matched in strength over control of the chuck of marble.

"My fight isn't with you," Xander grunted.

"That's funny. You probably should have thought about that before trying to take Claire." Graves jerked on the arm holding the stone and brought his forehead forward on a collision course with Sylar's nose. They broke apart as he scrunched up the broken portion of his face, sniffing to clear his sinuses with a hiss for the sting. Xander curiously watched the onset of swelling dissolve along with what should have been dark bruising as the split in the skin over the bridge of Sylar's nose sealed to a close.

"You defend a woman that has dedicated her life to chasing you - to arresting you…" Xander pulled his hood back to expose his face in the moonlight while he mused over the possible implications of such actions. His pale white skin was almost translucent with a myriad of blue veins networking beneath the surface giving his already gaunt appearance a deathlike quality. Dark circles haunted the shade of his eyes further accentuating the hard, angular features that could be seen around the overgrown mop of untidy black hair that fell in his face. He was young. Sylar guessed him to be barely out of his teen years but was hard-pressed to say for sure by the sharp wit lurking in the black depths of his eyes and the hardy musculature of his shoulders.

"Has the Boogeyman developed affections for his huntress?" A low rumble of a laugh for the absurdity of it all escaped him, rolling his eyes over the stars above, and exposing a set of monstrously sharpened canines.

"Don't over-analyze it." Sylar's grip on the jagged piece of marble tightened so that it cut into the flesh of his palm. Keeping a perfectly placid air about himself he continued to dissuade the assumption. "I just want the pleasure of ripping her apart to myself."

Graves laughed again, not truly believing the claim, and pulled his hood back over his head to hide his face. "I imagine we'll be seeing each other again, Sylar. Very soon." He walked away without turning his back on his enemy and disappeared into the night.

Sylar let the rock fall wondering what he had really gotten himself into. That had been the second person that day to have come to a conclusion about his relationship with Claire after running to the rescue. Not exactly his idea of convenience in a life that he had opted to live on the wrong side of the line. He should have known better. Should have realized that all she would bring to his life was chaos from the first night that he had met her and been thrown off of a damn roof for it. Cursing himself for his weaknesses, he retreated back to where the girl in question was still waiting because while he had fought to let her go, she wasn't willing to reciprocate.

* * *

><p>"I spy with my little eye something… green."<p>

"Grass."

"This game sucks."

"Yeah it does." West picked at the pebbles stuck in the bottom of his shoe being absolutely bored out of his skull.

"Do you think she's _ever_ going to shut up?"

"Nope." Alex rolled over where he was reclining in the grass to see the helicopter steadily rocking back and forth. Claire continued to incessantly hurl herself at the door, spewing obscenities without a moment of rest since she had been locked in. "Kind of feel sorry for Mel though. I think she got stuck in there with her."

Alex chuckled in response. "Yup." His stomach growled and he groaned for the absence of the meatloaf that he had signed on for. "Where the hell did Kyle go?"

"Don't know. Don't really care," West sighed.

"Dude." Alex perked up to stare off into the darkened distance. "Did you hear that?" They both climbed to their feet in anxious anticipation of someone approaching. The raucous snapping of twigs under foot and clumsy steps announced that the visitor was neither Sylar nor their previous attacker, but after the circumstances that they endured for the day, they were wary of being caught off-guard again. A shadow lurched out from the tree line in their direction, gaining speed as it closed the distance.

"Zach?" West met the shuffling figure with welcome relief. Taking in his excessively damp clothing that clung to his blue-tinted skin in the chilled night air he pulled off his top layer of armor to drape the protective fabric around Zach's shivering shoulders and arms that could not be removed from where they clenched at his sides for warmth. "Holy…" An angrily swollen patch of red lacerations presented themselves on the side of his neck in a semicircular pattern. "Did that thing _bite_ you?"

"I-I-I-I-d-d-do-don't re-re-mem-b-b-ber," he stammered between chatterings of his teeth.

"At least it's not bleeding anymore," Alex mumbled as he probed the affected flesh lightly before having his hand smacked away with a hiss for the wound's tenderness. "Where's Sylar?"

"Sylar?"

"You know. Tall guy. Rescued you. Acts like he has a stick up his ass."

Zach exchanged a thoroughly confused glance with both of his companions. "I just saw Claire." Another loud bang of body meeting metal vibrated the inside of the helicopter accompanied by muffled screams. They all turned to see the blonde pounding her fists against the window with all of her might. West turned back to add to the conversation only to run into another body that hadn't been there before. A perfect replica of the pint-sized fury stared up at him with defiantly crossed arms and a steely gaze from under heavily drawn browns.

"You forgot to mention the part about being a serial killer."

West scratched at the back of his neck nervously for an answer while Zach and Alex traded glances between the two Claires. "This is way too weird."

Sylar's flesh rippled and morphed back into that which belonged to him. In time with the shift, Kyle leapt out from the tree that he had lodged himself into in wait for the killer's return. The wave of a hand without so much as the courtesy of a head turned to look at the falling agent paused him in mid-air with his combat knife drawn to strike. A muffled grunt escaped him when he was unexpectedly dropped to the ground with what may have a little more force than necessary.

"Your Hong Kong E.T.A. is now over by one minute and thirty seconds," Sylar announced. Another wave of his hand from his side ceased a secondary attempt by the agent in his restraints. Curling his fingers into a claw-like position he gained control over O'Keefe's body. "If you would like to skip over the detention center, then I suggest that we work together to clean this mess up," he added with a rather pointed look for the windshield splattered with the pilot's blood.

Focusing with his other hand he ripped the door of the helicopter free from the welds that had sealed it shut allowing Claire to fall out of the opening and land face first in the dirt. He seized control of her body as well, effectively clamping her hateful mouth shut before she could utter any of the acidic words she mentally assaulted him with. "You," he pointed at West, "file the report for lost weaponry. All of your guns and ammunition were lost during the confrontation over Ivy Connors - where all four of you were _together_. The failure to capture the girl was a result of following protocols to spare the loss of human life. The other two _never_ left the states."

West nodded in timid agreement and did as instructed with a spared look for Claire's well-being. "You," he next pointed to Alex. "Pick up the mess. That chopper had better be in regulation condition within the next five minutes."

"Uh… Okay."

"You." Zach's eyes widened a bit when a deadly finger indicated his turn. "Come here." He took a few ginger steps toward the most wanted villain on the planet unsure of what to expect. Claire was yanked into his side with little finesse. The palm of her hand was slit with as little care, and then pressed to Zach's neck wound before it completely healed over. Her regenerative blood smeared over the skin that slowly swelled with new pink tissue of healing before knitting back together as though it had never been damaged in the first place. "Locate all of your gear and anything that belongs to him. Since neither of you exist here," he heavily implied, "it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have your things here. Or even the two of you for that matter. You'll be hiding under the back row of seats when the Chinese arrive."

"And you." Sylar turned to his living puppets. "You can clean up the blood."

Once they had all been motivated to work as a unit in order to clear the wreckage for their impending inspection, at least one forced into cooperation by the Boogeyman's mental will, the job fortunately went quickly. West occasionally glanced up over the edge of his lap top at the others milling around him while he typed furiously. Zach and Alex kept giving Sylar furtive looks as they shoveled miscellaneous awry items back into the appropriate containers and spaces, making cautiously sure that they were moving at a speed that was to his liking lest they discover the consequences as Kyle had. O'Keefe, obstinate to the very end, had struggled his way into semi-permanent control. Eventually he had become resigned to the fact that Sylar wasn't going to afford him an opportunity to stab him in the back as he always seemed to be looking _everywhere_ all the time, but that hadn't dissuaded him from muttering belligerently under his breath as he was manipulated to move the pilot's dead body into the very back seat where he was covered with a cargo tarp for transport back to the states. Claire, whose argumentative mouth had been clamped shut by a disembodied hand, glared venomously all the while she scrubbed away the blood from the windshield and cockpit controls. Not a moment too soon everything was carefully prepared as the Hong Kong branch of the Department touched down a few dozen yards away.

Sylar shifted into the form of the dead pilot prompting an unsavory hiss from Claire just as the other group of agents ducked out of their matching helicopter to back up their foreign comrades. The team leader, a slight man with a stature possibly more than a foot shorter than Sylar's approached the team in an air of silent confidence that demanded rapt attention. No one knew what his ability may have been, but as he took off his regulation helmet and eyed them all with a sharpness that could wither the bravest of men, they didn't feel up to the task of questioning him. He spoke quickly in his native tongue, directing his speech towards Claire as she was the designated leader of the group, and causing her to reach for some sort of explanation as she had no idea what he was saying and didn't feel as though he had the patience for them to terry. The visage of her deceased pilot locked onto her confusion for a split second before stepping forward as an interpreter. Having the ability to understand virtually any language thanks to Ms. Kane from his time spent working for the D.S.R.E.C. certainly had its advantages.

They spoke quite animatedly for over half an hour, the leader of the Chinese team inspecting everything to regulation detail. At one point the team nervously looked on as the two men appeared to be having a serious dispute but breathed a sigh of relief when they both slowly broke into an easy bout of laughter as though a joke had been shared between them. In the end, they had all saluted one another, and watched the Hong Kong team depart amicably.

"Nianzu, apologized for being late. Apparently the team had a problem getting clearance to enter the country since _they had no jurisdiction _here." Sylar's face and body bled back into that of his own while he stared Claire down until she averted her eyes. Having gotten his hint of guilt across, he continued in his explanation of the conversational events. "I think they were genuinely sorry for missing out on the action but that won't be enough to keep him from filing the paperwork for an official investigation into your conduct. Politicians on all sides of this are frothing at the mouth to skin you alive over this. This is a neutral zone and you violated a hell of a lot more than one peace accord by coming here." She found herself wondering why exactly it was that she along with the rest of her team, except for Kyle naturally, stood at rigid attention as though they were being berated by a senior officer. His nostrils flared slightly as he paced up and down the line with his hands drawn behind his back, half-forgetting that he no longer wore the uniform himself while thinking of the young squad members as childish cadets worthy of nothing less than his practiced reprimand. "It'll all get swept under the rug of course," Sylar muttered disdainfully, coming to a stop once again in front of Claire. "Under the veil of black ops I imagine."

Claire cleared her throat uncomfortably and gestured towards her left eye. He ceased bearing down on her to peer into the reflective glass of the chopper's side door. Between becoming her in order to face Xander and then the dead pilot, one of his eyes had gotten stuck blue. Shape shifting, while having its perks, also erred on the side of dangerous when used for too long. He grunted and rubbed at the offending iris until it again flooded the appropriate shade of brown. "Get in the helicopter." Lickety-split they all followed the grumbled command and strapped themselves in.

No one else seemed to question his capability as he slid into the pilot's station but the ever precocious blonde leaned forward into the cockpit after glancing about at the others. During the commotion the ponderings over who the hell was going to fly them all home had been forgotten. West could have eventually gotten the job done one at a time, but that was just a bit unpractical. "Do you know how to fly this thing?"

Sylar fiddled with the controls, pressing a red-hued button and flipping overhead switches as he toggled a joystick, examining it all with surreal familiarity. "No. But Nathan did." She instantly frowned at him though she remained silent, settling back into her position. It was with a morose sense that he continued to call upon the memories of the fallen Petrelli that didn't rightfully belong to him, and steered them all back towards the motherland.

Once they had crossed the boundary lines of neutrality back into the Department territory, made the layover in Nanning to Shanghai, and then traded in for an oceanic transport back to the Los Angeles base without detection of the dead body they carried in tow; a minor miracle that Claire presumed to be the product of one of Sylar's telepathic skills, they dumped Kyle off under threat of death if he talked to anyone about the criminal element's involvement over the course of the mission. Zach and Alex also chose to quietly depart in favor of hot showers and crashing face first into standard issue cots at the California D.S.R.E.C. facility which would take care of their redirection back to New York the next day. Much to everyone's surprise, Sylar offered a gentlemen's hand to assist agent Waters to her quarters under the guise of another agent, but they hadn't been able to hear her silent plea that they speak privately. There was a matter of great importance that she needed to warn him about.

She seemed to be pleasantly amused at the bravado with which he stalked the halls at her side. She felt the subtle air currents of an exaggerated swagger drift over her skin and internally smiled for the imaginings it conjured. At the door to her room for the evening, Melanie purposefully lingered in his presence when he wished to disembark. Sylar watched her blind eyes roll behind the adorned cover, almost pensively waiting the _hunger's_ call for her ability, when she motioned for him to come closer than the respectful distance he had kept between them. Somewhat hesitantly he followed the demands of her wagging finger until she could whisper into his ear that she had something he needed to see. "I told her she would save the wrong one."

Before he thought to avoid the motion, the all-seeing agent grabbed his arm. Flashes of faces and places in times that had yet to pass raced through his mind in fractured sequences, rippling and being overwritten as quickly as they came. There wasn't any sense of cohesive order to the jumble of images or sense of time frame to be felt. Decisions were still being made. The complete future was still being written as he saw it. But what little was decidedly sure, was more than a little disturbing.

_He recognized the world falling in to place around him as New York City, but the once mesmerizing metropolis had become a battleground of apocalyptic proportion. Low flying military jets zoomed overheard where towering skyscrapers had once stood in all of their shining glory, swooping in until nothing but the deafening roar of their engines filled the air. Machine guns fired heavy caliber bullets in dense spray patterns at fleeing targets whose bodies joined the street carnage riddled of steel and stone. Gas canisters were deployed, detonating on impact to catch any survivors that couldn't escape the lethal green fog._

_One of the few stragglers equipped with gas masks darted out from the cover of a collapsed tower to toss an I.E.D. into the tracks of a patrolling battle tank. The explosion violently ripped the lengths of ribbed steel from the combat vehicle which managed to launch an artillery shell directly into the half-crumbled building behind Sylar before rolling on its side with the force of the blast. Debris was showered over the area as commandos exited the hatch of the tank with their guns blazing, successfully falling the original attacker and his accomplices. _

_Tripwires were strung about passages too narrow for armored vehicles, connecting a sea of land mines that few dared to traverse. One unlucky soul had daftly gotten himself tangled in the last strands before freedom. He gave a heart's beat pause to look directly at Sylar with knowing in his eyes before a series of blast waves sent shrapnel and pink mist spiraling in all directions, nails, glass shards, and other improvised items of deadly nature imbedding themselves in any surface that stood to stop the trajectory._

_A platoon of soldiers marched down a side street towards the last remaining fortress in the distance with precisely synchronized steps designed to disguise their numbers. Members of the opposing faction that impeded their progress were swiftly cut down in a hail of abilities. Flames erupted from inside one of the dilapidated structures they passed by and a force field burst into life to protect the unit from more projectile damage. Another troop came to join their ranks, swatting enemies away with controlled doses of seismic activity._

_All motion seemed to slow and come to a perfect stillness though when an angry rumbling in the earth growled beneath their feet. Manhole coverings flipped into the air from intense pressure changes. Screams could be heard in the distance as a tidal wave of water came crashing into view to swallow everything in its path. One of the passing jets did an awkward barrel roll in the sky from dysfunctional instruments before plummeting into a nosedive that ended in an explosion that rattled his rib cage. Instinct demanded that he run, but fear born of helplessness absolute held his feet firmly locked in place. Concrete rose and split to release surges of boiling hot steam into the atmosphere. Beyond that he could see an enraged rip opening the ground, tearing a voracious scar across the flesh of the world that widened with an ungodly screech. In the distance the fortress that he had seen looming over the horizon quaked and crumbled to be engulfed in the ever expanding gorge._

With his ears still ringing and his heart surely in danger of arrest, Sylar dropped to his knees. He coughed and choked in the fresh air that somehow still tasted acidic in his mind. "It's coming," Melanie whispered to him at her feet before turning in to her quarters without another eerie word.

Sylar all but ran from there. He had seen futures heavily featuring annihilation before. A few had even been by his own hand. But the level of destruction that the pre-cog had forced into his mind's eye could not have been his fault alone. There was a feel of venomous brutality within the hateful landscape that he had never known; not from the Company, the Shanti virus, Arthur Petrelli, Samuel Sullivan, Brandon Miller, Lucius Kline, or the Department that sought to destroy him… None were comparable in sheer ruthless quality. It was much bigger and grander in scope than anything they had faced before. A new beast that sowed the seeds of war amongst their own until the very Earth beneath their feet surrendered its support.

He stopped at the open bay doors of the barracks to collapse against the framework. He wiped the sheen of sweat free from his brow as he looked out on the sprawling city lights that blanketed the land. Millions toiled their lives away on the asphalt arteries that interconnected the city; commuting to their cubicles under the rising sun, children padding out of their rooms to be ushered to school by hassled parents, dreams being born, and senseless violence shooting others down. A chaotic, teetering balance that few understood and less were aware of. In that singular moment that like the Farnese Atlas, the entirety of the world had been thrust upon his shoulders, Sylar knew that he couldn't save it alone. A few old friends were in order.

"Hey." West had wandered right up behind him while his mind had been so dreadfully distracted and the boy's voice disturbed his reverie. "We're, uh, we're heading out now," he said with an over the shoulder gesture to indicate Claire as his travel companion. "I just wanted to say thank you." Sylar briefly narrowed his eyes at him. Part of him was irritated by the audacity to thank him given their particular relationship in regards to the petulant blonde that tapped her foot impatiently. The other half was slightly surprised because he couldn't remember the last time that he had been confronted with such genuine gratitude for something that he had done. "You really saved our asses out there. You didn't have to, but you did, and I really do appreciate that." He gave the kid a mild nod of acceptance and watched him walk out the bay doors into the fresh morning air blissfully unaware of the bloody fate that awaited them all.

"This doesn't change anything between us." Sylar rolled his eyes. Every warm and fuzzy fiber that had been conjured by West's thankfulness was set on fire and marshmallow roasted by Claire's turn to pick at him.

"I do believe we've already had this conversation," he grumbled, not even bothering to turn around and face the little ball of infuriating spite.

"I just wanted to make sure that was clear." Claire bounced on the balls of her feet uncomfortably in the silence. "What are we going to do with the body?" she humbly asked in reference to their pilot. Since he had cleaned up all the rest of their mess it wasn't much of a shocker that she would expect disposal as well.

"I imagine he'll be having a tragic motor vehicle accident on the way home today." She would never tell him thank you as her partner had. Claire wouldn't allow herself to be in his debt. But however much she reminded him of her equally annoying father as she walked away, the thoughtful she gaze she tossed over her shoulder at him communicated all that needed to be known.

* * *

><p>"Parkman! Damn it, Parkman, open up!" Sylar used the full potential of all of his drunken talent to take an extended pull from his rapidly draining whiskey bottle at the same time that he mercilessly banged on his newly Canadian friend's front door. "Parkman, you lazy son-of-a…"<p>

Matt flipped on his porch light causing Sylar to flinch a little under its unexpected brightness before he whipped the door open. He rubbed his sleepy eyes as he stood in his undershirt and boxers for all the world to see. "Sylar, it's three in the morning. What the fuck do you want?"

"Right now?" he laughed in succession with a hiccup. "To come inside. I'm freezing my ass off out here."

The former police officer turned super hero, turned federal agent, turned wanted fugitive and expatriate, flopped down on his sofa with a sigh. His pink-tinged eyes watched the once reformed lunatic that dared to shadow his doorstep at such an unreasonable hour furiously as he wandered about the living room area examining all of the cheerfully framed family portraits. "I need a place to stay tonight."

"No."

"Please?"

"No."

"Why?"

Parkman chuckled incredulously. "Maybe because you woke me up in the middle of the night? Maybe because I'm on the damn FBI's most wanted list because of you?" Sylar dropped into the chair across from him with a depressed sigh. "But mostly, because my wife _hates_ you and she'll kill me if she finds you on the couch again. What's wrong with your place?"

"Department trashed it."

Matt rubbed his face to become fully alert to the situation. "Can't you stay at Edgar's?"

"Meh," he whined. "Tracy is always there, and they're always in the pool, and she hates me too…"

"Pool? What about the -" Matt cut himself off in mid-sentence with a disgusted facial expression. "Never mind. I don't want to know. My kids swim in that pool."

"I know." Sylar snorted with barely restrained laughter. "At least he's polite enough to bleach it and change the water when he knows you're coming." Parkman groaned into the decorative pillow that he pressed to his face in vain hopes of warding away mental images.

"I guess you and Peter are still on the outs?"

"Oh yeah."

"Are either of you ever going to tell us what happened?"

"Nope."

Matt was temporarily tempted to drag the information out of his mind. In his drunken stupor, he may have even had a real chance at trumping the ex-super villain, but something about the desperation lurking in the haunted depths of his eyes tugged at his more empathetic side. He didn't really need the place to stay when he could go anywhere and afford any place he wanted. For whatever reason, Sylar just didn't want to be alone. "I brought our best friends," he wheedled, pulling out a selection of rather large bottles that peeked out from his coat pockets. "Jim, Jack, and Jose…" He waved one of the bottles in a manner that was meant to be enticing before taking another drink. "Come on, Parkman. Don't make me threaten your family."

"Whatever," Matt snorted derisively. "Pass me the Jack, you lush."

"Pushover."

"Lightweight."

They clinked bottle necks in a reluctant toast, Matt savoring the warm flavor of his chosen whiskey, and Sylar contentedly sinking towards oblivion where he could hide from all of his problems if just for a little while. And there, in giddy delirium, he answered all of his unlikely buddy's questions. "I saw Claire again today."

"Oh boy, here we go again."

* * *

><p>Somewhere in Central Park, in the heart of New York City, two shadows appeared from thin air with a slight <em>pop<em> of space and time to indignantly smack into the ground at the velocity they had continued to fall. Sylar rolled onto his side with a pained groan as he heaved for breath, Peter pushing himself up enough to spit out the clod of grass and dirt that his face had been shoved into on impact - or at least the versions of themselves from twenty years in the future as it were.

"Get off of me, Two-Face." Sylar shoved his Rebel cohort off the top of him as rudely as possible and clambered to his feet.

"Thanks for breaking my fall," Peter muttered sarcastically. He turned his attention away from brushing himself off when his accomplice failed to make the typical scathing retort. When Sylar didn't acknowledge the push that he sent his direction, merely stumbling a pace or two and continuing to stare off into the distance, Peter too came to study what the other man saw and instantly became just as enthralled. Over the tree line city lights winked at them like welcoming arms of sweet life, bustling noises of a thriving community reaching their ears from the direction of towering skyscrapers that neither had seen standing at attention in years. Straight from the frying pan of a war ravaged future, they had jumped into the fire of the past with Miranda nowhere in sight.

"I almost forgot what it used to be like," Sylar mumbled awe, the first to come around as Peter remained dumbfounded. "We should track down Whitlocke. This could be our chance to -"

"I'm going to find Emma."

"Hang on." Sylar sprinted to catch up with the scarred Petrelli as he power walked away with only one goal on his mind. "Damn it, Two-Face," he griped, catching Peter by the shoulder and spinning him around. "We have a priority objective to meet here."

"You just said it, Sylar. This is our chance to stop the future from happening. I can save her, Sylar. I can keep Emma from dying this time." He spoke with such desperately hopeful conviction that it was reminiscent of the old Peter. Somewhere, deep, deep down beneath the muck and grime of corruption that bright young hero twinkled in his eyes again and it nearly tore Sylar apart to have to say no.

"You know I loved Emma, Peter. It killed me too when she was -"

Out of nowhere a fist collided with his jaw to send him sprawling on his backside in the grass. "You don't get to talk about her!" Peter screeched at the top of his lungs in a blind fury. "I could have saved her, Sylar! I could have saved her! It's all your fault that she's gone!" The jagged line of scar tissue splitting his face neatly in half rippled with the revolving emotions that fluctuated across his features. "You _never_ loved her like I did."

"I know…" Sylar wiped the trail of blood from the healing split in his bottom lip.

"You're going after Claire," Peter sneered, relentless in his assault even as Sylar flinched at the sound of her name from where he remained on the ground.

"Peter…"

"No! You're going after Claire, but I don't get to save Emma? What? She doesn't matter enough? Huh?" Peter gave him a sharp kick in the ribs as he grew more angry by the second thinking about it. "Is she not important enough? Fuck you, Sylar. Fuck you, and fuck Claire too."

He could have stopped him. Hell, he could have opened up a black hole and swallowed the broken bastard into nothingness. But as Sylar rolled back to his feet, watching his oldest friend march away into the darkness, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Beyond all the backstabbings and betrayal, the pain they felt aching in their rib cages where their poor excuses for black hearts continued to beat was all too mutual.

He pulled off his tattered Rebel coat to shake off in the beautifully refreshing night breeze. After years of breathing toxic pollution and acrid, burnt air filled with ash, the smells of home had never been so good. While patting away the dust and charred bits of his pants, Sylar looked up to notice a homeless man that had watched everything in complete disbelief. He traded confused looks from his bottle of swill to the time displaced soldier and back again; taking the last drink before tossing the glass away with a loud clattering _clink. _

"What are you looking at?"

* * *

><p>Desert sands picked up in intensity as the false winds gained force. Peter threw up his arm to protect his face from the blasting power of the coarse grains; the soft flesh of his arm being continuously ground away as it regenerated. Blue lightning illuminated the hazy atmosphere around him in brilliant displays that marked where to go next. Barely above the howling in his ears he could hear savage screaming, almost inhuman in nature. He had no idea where he was actually going, but there was an irresistible compulsion to follow the unearthly signs as his feet sank deeper into the building obstruction of dirt with every step. There was something that needed to be seen.<p>

Claire. If he squinted tightly against the gale and focused through the tears that shielded his eyes he could distinguish her figure in the storm. Her long black tresses whipped and whirled about her face as she stared past him without seeing. On the other side was a stalking shadow that he couldn't possibly mistake for anyone but Sylar.

Seemingly unprovoked, his niece broke away from their holding pattern, lunging her way through the grinding storm to attack him with a fierce shriek. Peter didn't understand what he was seeing exactly. It was Claire. There was no doubt about that. But, there was also something very wrong with her. Something… evil.

They disappeared so that he couldn't follow the pair anymore. Just as suddenly as he found himself lost though, the sands died down and dissipated into a clear view of an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. It was a bit of a ramshackle establishment. Any paint that had been present had been stripped away. Wooden planks from the siding fell off at awkward angles around the shattered window panes. Still, before its untimely demise the place must have been as spartanly plain as was possible for habitation.

A gentle glow began to filter out from the dilapidated structure. Peter took a few cautious steps towards it until he found himself halted by a hand at his shoulder. He turned to see who it was at his side only to be confronted with none other than himself. A rather warped and twisted version of himself as it were, with darkened malice in his eyes and a deforming scar stretching the length of his face, but Peter Petrelli nonetheless. Together they watched the glow from the house increase so that it became blinding. He felt the white-hot heat sear through his being, tearing away at him as the sands had so that his flesh fell away as ashes under the red-tinted sun; and when he opened his eyes again, he stood in the middle of a sea of destruction. The desert floor smoldered, cracking and crunching outward from under foot as a spider web of molten glass.

His doppelganger leaned in to whisper in his ear. "It's coming."

All over the world precognitive dreamers and those tied to them sat bolt upright in their beds slick with sweat from their nightmares. Sylar rolled over on Parkman's couch, pulling a pillow over his head to make it all go away. Claire tossed and turned fitfully, crying out in the night. Peter sat on the edge of the bed to flip on the lamp, careful to answer the phone on the nightstand before it actually rang though he knew the noise wouldn't disturb his wife's sleep.

"Yeah, Mom, I saw it too. It's coming."

**To be continued...**


End file.
